Wild Bill Donovan

Author : Douglas Waller
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416576207
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wild Bill Donovan written by Douglas Waller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Entertaining history...Donovan was a combination of bold innovator and imprudent rule bender, which made him not only a remarkable wartime leader but also an extraordinary figure in American history" (The New York Times Book Review). He was one of America's most exciting and secretive generals--the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, "Wild Bill" Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country's first national intelligence agency) and the father of today's CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovan's relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. William Joseph Donovan's life was packed with personal drama. The son of poor Irish Catholic parents, he married into Protestant wealth and fought heroically in World War I, where he earned the nickname "Wild Bill" for his intense leadership and the Medal of Honor for his heroism. After the war he made millions as a Republican lawyer on Wall Street until FDR, a Democrat, tapped him to be his strategic intelligence chief. A charismatic leader, Donovan was revered by his secret agents. Yet at times he was reckless--risking his life unnecessarily in war zones, engaging in extramarital affairs that became fodder for his political enemies--and he endured heartbreaking tragedy when family members died at young ages. Wild Bill Donovan reads like an action-packed spy thriller, with stories of daring young men and women in his OSS sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage, breaking into Washington embassies to steal secrets, plotting to topple Adolf Hitler, and suffering brutal torture or death when they were captured by the Gestapo. It is also a tale of political intrigue, of infighting at the highest levels of government, of powerful men pitted against one another. Donovan fought enemies at home as often as the Axis abroad. Generals in the Pentagon plotted against him. J. Edgar Hoover had FBI agents dig up dirt on him. Donovan stole secrets from the Soviets before the dawn of the Cold War and had intense battles with Winston Churchill and British spy chiefs over foreign turf. Separating fact from fiction, Waller investigates the successes and the occasional spectacular failures of Donovan's intelligence career. It makes for a gripping and revealing portrait of this most controversial spymaster.

Author : Douglas Waller
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416568050
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wild Bill Donovan written by Douglas Waller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Entertaining history…Donovan was a combination of bold innovator and imprudent rule bender, which made him not only a remarkable wartime leader but also an extraordinary figure in American history” (The New York Times Book Review). He was one of America’s most exciting and secretive generals—the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, “Wild Bill” Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country’s first national intelligence agency) and the father of today’s CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovan’s relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. Wild Bill Donovan reads like an action-packed spy thriller, with stories of daring young men and women in the OSS sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage, breaking into Washington embassies to steal secrets, plotting to topple Adolf Hitler, and suffering brutal torture or death when they were captured by the Gestapo. It is also a tale of political intrigue, of infighting at the highest levels of government, of powerful men pitted against one another. Separating fact from fiction, Waller investigates the successes and the occasional spectacular failures of Donovan’s intelligence career. It makes for a gripping and revealing portrait of this most controversial spymaster.

Author : Douglas Waller
Publisher : Free Press
ISBN 13 : 9781416567448
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wild Bill Donovan written by Douglas Waller and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was one of America’s most exciting and secretive generals—the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, “Wild Bill” Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country’s first national intelligence agency) and the father of today’s CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovan’s relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. William Joseph Donovan’s life was packed with personal drama. The son of poor Irish Catholic parents, he married into Protestant wealth and fought heroically in World War I, where he earned the nickname “Wild Bill” for his intense leadership and the Medal of Honor for his heroism. After the war he made millions as a Republican lawyer on Wall Street until FDR, a Democrat, tapped him to be his strategic intelligence chief. A charismatic leader, Donovan was revered by his secret agents. Yet at times he was reckless—risking his life unnecessarily in war zones, engaging in extramarital affairs that became fodder for his political enemies—and he endured heartbreaking tragedy when family members died at young ages. Wild Bill Donovan reads like an action-packed spy thriller, with stories of daring young men and women in his OSS sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage, breaking into Washington embassies to steal secrets, plotting to topple Adolf Hitler, and suffering brutal torture or death when they were captured by the Gestapo. It is also a tale of political intrigue, of infighting at the highest levels of government, of powerful men pitted against one another. Donovan fought enemies at home as often as the Axis abroad. Generals in the Pentagon plotted against him. J. Edgar Hoover had FBI agents dig up dirt on him. Donovan stole secrets from the Soviets before the dawn of the Cold War and had intense battles with Winston Churchill and British spy chiefs over foreign turf. Separating fact from fiction, Waller investigates the successes and the occasional spectacular failures of Donovan’s intelligence career. It makes for a gripping and revealing portrait of this most controversial spymaster.

Author : Douglas Waller
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451693745
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Disciples written by Douglas Waller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Wild Bill Donovan, tells the story of four OSS warriors of World War II. All four later led the CIA. They are the most famous and controversial directors the CIA has ever had-- Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Disciples is the story of these dynamic agents and their daring espionage and sabotage in wartime Europe under OSS Director Bill Donovan. Allen Dulles ran the OSS's most successful spy operation against the Axis. Bill Casey organized dangerous missions to penetrate Nazi Germany. Bill Colby led OSS commando raids behind the lines in occupied France and Norway. Richard Helms mounted risky intelligence programs against the Russians in the ruin of Berlin after the German surrender. Four very different men, they later led (or misled) the successor CIA. Dulles launched the calamitous operation to land CIA-trained, anti-Castro guerrillas at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. Helms was convicted of lying to Congress over the CIA's role in the coup that ousted Chile's president. Colby would become a pariah for releasing to Congress what became known as the 'Family Jewels' report on CIA misdeeds during the 1950s, sixties and early seventies. Casey would nearly bring down the CIA-- and Ronald Reagan's presidency-- from a scheme that secretly supplied Nicaragua's contras with money raked off from the sale of arms to Iran for American hostages in Beirut. Mining thousands of once-secret World War II documents and interviewing scores of family members and CIA colleagues, Waller has written a brilliant successor to Wild Bill Donovan"--

Author : Thomas F. Troy
Publisher : New Haven : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300065633
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wild Bill and Intrepid written by Thomas F. Troy and published by New Haven : Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was the CIA solely an American accomplishment--the work of "Wild Bill" Donovan--as CIA tradition has held? Or was it, in fact, established through the workings of Bill Stephenson, the legendary "Intrepid" who directed British intelligence in the U.S. during World War II? In this gripping book, a former staff officer and analyst at CIA unveils the truth about the agency's origins.

Author : Thomas F. Troy
Publisher : Frederick, Md. : Aletheia Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 638 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Donovan and the CIA written by Thomas F. Troy and published by Frederick, Md. : Aletheia Books. This book was released on 1981 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As conceived, this history was aimed at satisfying the need of employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, especially new or young professional ones, for a comprehensive and detailed account of the agency's origin. It was completed in 1975, classified SECRET, and reproduced in sets of 2 volumes each. The security classification has recently been reviewed, and the manuscript, shorn of no more than six typewritten pages of material, is now declassified. Thus released for leisurely reading outside the office, and printed in one volume, this history should better serve its original purpose."--Preface.

Author : Richard Dunlop
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1628738987
Total Pages : 850 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Donovan written by Richard Dunlop and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating biography of the man who laid the foundation for the CIA. One of the most celebrated and highly decorated heroes of World War I, a noted trial lawyer, presidential adviser and emissary, and chief of America’s Office of Strategic Services during World War II, William J. Donovan was a legendary figure. Donovan, originally published in 1982, penetrates the cloak of secrecy surrounding this remarkable man. During the dark days of World War II, “Wild Bill” Donovan, more than any other person, was responsible for what William Stevenson, author of A Man Called Intrepid, described as “the astonishing success with which the United States entered secret warfare and accomplished in less than four years what it took England many centuries to develop.” Drawing upon Donovan’s diaries, letters, and other papers; interviews with hundreds of the men and women who worked with him and spied for him; and declassified and unpublished documents, author Richard Dunlop, himself a former member of Donovan’s OSS, traces the incredible career of the man who almost single-handedly created America’s central intelligence service. The result is the definitive biography that Donovan himself had always expected Dunlop would write. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Author : Anthony Cave Brown
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 9780394723051
Total Pages : 891 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The last hero written by Anthony Cave Brown and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1984 with total page 891 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depicts the life of a successful lawyer, soldier, and athlete who founded and helped direct America's intelligence operations during World War II

Author : Mark Riebling
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451603851
Total Pages : 598 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wedge written by Mark Riebling and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prophetic when first published, even more relevant now, Wedge is the classic, definitive story of the secret war America has waged against itself. Based on scores of interviews with former spies and thousands of declassified documents, Wedge reveals and re-creates -- battle by battle, bungle by bungle -- the epic clash that has made America uniquely vulnerable to its enemies. For more than six decades, the opposed and overlapping missions of the FBI and CIA -- and the rival personalities of cops and spies -- have caused fistfights and turf tangles, breakdowns and cover-ups, public scandals and tragic deaths. A grand panorama of dramatic episodes, peopled by picaresque secret agents from Ian Fleming to Oliver North, Wedge is both a journey and a warning. From Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, and the plots to kill Castro through the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Iran Contra down to the Aldrich Ames affair, Robert Hanssen's treachery, and the hunt for Al Qaeda -- Wedge shows the price America has paid for its failure to resolve the conflict between law enforcement and intelligence. Gripping and authoritative -- and updated with an important new epilogue, carrying the action through to September 11, 2001 -- Wedge is the only book about the schism that has informed nearly every major blunder in American espionage.

Author : Douglas Waller
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501126873
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lincoln's Spies written by Douglas Waller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the nation—filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue. Veteran CIA correspondent Douglas Waller delivers a riveting account of the heroes and misfits who carried out a shadow war of espionage and covert operations behind the Confederate battlefields. Lincoln’s Spies follows four agents from the North—three men and one woman—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration after he learns of an assassination attempt from his agents working undercover as Confederate soldiers. But he proved less than competent as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Sharpe deployed secret agents throughout the South, planted misinformation with Robert E. Lee’s army, and outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets that she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of history. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. He assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, DC. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these operatives was Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take whatever chances necessary to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies is a “meticulous chronicle of all facets of Lincoln’s war effort” (Kirkus Reviews) and an excellent choice for those wanting “a cracking good tale” (Publishers Weekly) of espionage in the Civil War.