Legacy of ashes : the history of the CIA / Tim Weiner.

Includes [2008] new afterword pages 595 -601.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [607]-778) and index.

part 1. In the beginning, we knew nothing : the CIA under Truman, 1945-1953. 1. Intelligence must be global and totalitarian -- 2. The logic of force -- 3. Fight fire with fire -- 4. The most secret thing -- 5. A rich blind man -- 6. They were suicide missions -- 7. A vast field of illusion -- part 2. A strange kind of genius : the CIA under Eisenhower, 1953 to 1961. 8. We have no plan -- 9. CIA's greatest single triumph -- 10. Bomb repeat bomb -- 11. And then we'll have a storm -- 12. We ran it in a different way -- 13. Wishful blindness -- 14. Ham-handed operations of all kinds -- 15. A very strange war -- 16. He was lying down and he was lying up -- Note50500 part 3. Lost causes : the CIA under Kennedy and Johnson, 1961 to 1968. 17. Nobody knew what to do -- 18. We had also fooled ourselves -- 19. We'd be delighted to trade those missiles -- 20. Hey, boss, we did a good job, didn't we? -- 21. I thought it was a conspiracy -- 22. An ominous drift -- 23. More courage than wisdom -- 24. The beginning of a long slide downwards -- 25. We knew then that we could not win the war -- 26. A political H-bomb -- 27. Track down the foreign communists -- part 4. Get rid of the clowns : the CIA under Nixon and Ford, 1968 to 1977. 28. What the hell do those clowns do out there in Langley? -- 29. USG wants a military solution -- 30. We are going to catch a lot of hell -- 31. To change the concept of a secret service -- 32. A classic fascist ideal -- 33. The CIA would be destroyed -- 34. Saigon signing off -- 35. Ineffective and scared -- part 5. Victory without joy : the CIA under Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, 1977 to 1993. 36. He sought to overthrow their system -- 37. We were just plain asleep -- 38. A free-lance buccaneer -- 39. In a dangerous way -- 40. He was running a great risk -- 41. A con man's con man -- 42. To think the unthinkable -- 43. What are we going to do when the wall comes down? -- Note50500 part 6. The reckoning : the CIA under Clinton and George W. Bush, 1993 to 2007. 44. We had no facts -- 45. Why in the world didn't we know? -- 46. We're in trouble -- 47. The threat could not be more real -- 48. The dark side -- 49. A grave mistake -- 50. The burial ceremony.

National Book Award winner-Nonfiction, 2007.