Edward Jay Epstein is the author of fifteen books. He studied government at Cornell and Harvard and received a Ph.D from Harvard in 1973. His thesis on the search for political truth became a best-selling book, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth. His doctoral dissertation on television news was published as News From Nowhere. He is the recipient of numerous foundation grants and awards, including the prestigious Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award for both best biography and best business book for Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer. He has written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in New York City.
--This text refers to the paperback edition.
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5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating history & primer on disinformation
Reviewed in the United States on 29 March 2017
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Well-researched, well-written history rife with Cold War intrigue. And a great examination of disinformation & deception as it's actually practiced. Any student of con artistry will immediately recognize the principles at play, most importantly that it's the most intelligent (or those who think themselves most intelligent) who are most easily conned. Really makes you reconsider not only events in the past, but also recent events in a different light. Read along with Ion Pacepa's work, one is astonished at just how effective Russian disinformation efforts were & continue to be today, as evidenced by some anti-Western sentiments, still cherished by our so-called intellectuals & academics, which have simply become accepted fact that turn out to be purely manufactured products of the KGB.
And, of course, the lessons still hold true today as we grapple w/ organizations other than the KGB. Any marketing/PR/advertising major or political campaign manager recognizes the massive power one has to influence people simply by telling them what they want to hear or playing to their vanity, or by discovering what they really desire and then making it seem like that's exactly what you're offering them. It makes you wonder how all those intelligence guys managed to believe anything was true.
For us, too, in an age where so much has become politicized and so many supposed "facts" and "studies" peddled by what should be reputable outfits turn out to be agenda-driven disinformation, the knowledge that even when one knows the tactics, one is just as liable to be taken in as anyone else should give us all pause.
Although war is an avoidable endeavor and it truly should be deception is an unavoidable one, a constant, and being prepared for a deception can almost cause as much damage as the deception itself. Still a constant. Growing up in Detroit the threat of being a victim of violence was a constant and for me I learned to know who was around and/or coming my way and I truly did avoid major harm but the cost to me was alienating almost everyone I met with my constant suspicion.
4.0 out of 5 starsI recommend this book to anyone interested in the James Jesus ...
Reviewed in the United States on 16 April 2015
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I recommend this book to anyone interested in the James Jesus Angleton controversy, as well as the idea of deception writ large. However, though I HATE "gotcha" observations, I must point out that in Chapter Ten, "The New Maginot Line" (I read the 1989 hardback version, which may have been improved and updated for the paperback version), Mr. Epstein mentions attending an intelligence conference at the Air Force Academy in BOULDER, CO in June 1984: NEWSFLASH--the US Air Force Academy is NOT in Boulder, CO; it is about 15 miles north of downtown Colorado Springs on I-25. Now, for a book on intelligence and deception, this is disturbing, to say the very least. Otherwise, an excellent and fascinating book.