Agencies

Electronic Data Interchange (Edi : Using Electronic Commerce to Enhance Defense Logistics)

Emperors of Adland was better than I expected. It basically talks about the merger-mania of advertising agencies in the 1980s. It's very informative but reads like a book. You don't even realize all the info that you're absorbing because it's such an easy, fast read. Nancy Millman, the author, does a good job of giving the reader a mental picture of the leading figures in the advertising business. She used interviews from the people involved, newspapers and magazines to make the book as factual as possible. The agencies she includes are: Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB, Needham, JWT, etc. This is my first reading about the advertising business and I enjoyed it very much. I reccomend it to anyone looking for a good read.

A quick read for those interested in getting a start on the functions and responsibilities of various Israeli intelligence agencies. Although highly entertaining, it seems that this book should be read with a grain of salt, since there are some doubts to the origins of the information printed. Yet that is not a problem since the book focuses a great deal on the politics of the Israeli intelligence community rather than on the details of individual cases.

The Fish is Red is a compendium of CIA backed goings on in America's secret (and necessarily so) war against the Castro regime in Cuba up until the late 70's. Anyone of a mind to say the U.S. didn't try to dislodge the status quo in Cuba during those years will learn otherwise from a book whose publication was reportedly in jeopardy for conflicts with U.S. national security interests. Haitian coup attempts as well as "see bee ess" involvement are covered as well. Great read.(and true!)

Before I read this book, I had only a the vaguest of notions about what happened in Cuba forty years ago. Living in Australia, I was aware that it had been a time of crisis for the USA, but I knew nothing of the heroic story of the patriotic and courageous band of Cubans who undertook a doomed mission to overthrow the Castro regime.

Karen Alea's story of "Pepin" Almeida, a doctor and one of the leaders of the Cuban rebels, brings that significant episode to life in a very graphic manner. She successfully takes us inside the mind of this man, exploring his motivation and his reactions to the tragic outcome of the mission. Her description of the horrendous days of wandering in the swamps before the band of dispirited men were taken prisoner is very well executed, as is the story of their incarceration, and the cruel mental torture they suffered.

Pepin Almeida emerges as a deeply spiritual man whose strong faith is very inspiring to the reader, whatever his/her own faith may be. Yet at the same time he is a very well-rounded person with endearing ordinary qualities. The story of his wife, Toty, while secondary to the main storyline, is also most inspirational.

Karen Alea has an engaging style and a gift for making people and situations very real to the reader. More from this author, please!

This book narrates several episodes of executive leadership in the USPO, the USDA, and Department of the Interior during the last decades of the 19th and the early decades of the 20th centuries. The author shows how post office and agriculture department bureau chiefs effectively managed upward, outward, and through their organizations to create public value and thereby gained considerable operating discretion for themselves and their departments and how managerial failures in interior's reclamation bureau resulted in its loss. For students of public management, this book provides case evidence for many of Mark Moore's strongest normative claims. It is first rate, well written, plausible historical narrative. Its weaknesses are too little attention to the creation of public value (perhaps because that would smack too much of normative economics) and far too much attention to issues that could only be of interest to academic political scientists.

Very interesting book years ahead in talking about the troubles we now face. I would assume this would be brought back out given the state of the war on terrorism. Ok so he does not have a boatload of facts, but that was in 1992 - look at what has happened over the past 10 years. He comments were right on. There are lost of interesting stories from Africa to Europe and central Asia. This book provides a look into the French intelligence agency that for me a new given that most books in the area deal with the CIA, MI5 or the KGB. If you read this book you will be talking about it to your friends for weeks after you have finished it. The book is written well and keeps moving, it does not get bogged down in "the French are the best" hyperbole.

I just got my copy of Free Agency today and began reading. I caught my attention and help it - Richard has packed lots of information in a "small" volume. If anyone is thinking about going "independent" I recommend getting this book as a resource. I provides down to earth information, usable to right now!

Popular memory is replete with images of France's intelligence failures prior to the Second World War, and during its own Vietnam War, as well in the dramatically bungled 1985 French intelligence effort leading to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship belonging to the environmental group Greenpeace. While these are all subjects treated in this book, Douglas Porch takes a far more penetrating look at the intelligence services of France, tracing their origins back to the ancien regime and Napolean, and looking at some lesser known sucesses. The depth of this book is impressive, given the well known propensity for secrecy among the French establishment which makes it exceedingly difficult for researchers like Porch to access relevant archives. This is a serious, academic study, and one which become even more relevant given the increased output in France during the 1990s, after this book was published in the United States, on some related subjects relating to French foreign policy. If you are interested in a less historical, less academic, and more limited English-language account of French foreign policy, including the role of its intelligence servies, try Mort Rosenblum's Mission to Civilize which I have also reviewed on this website.

One hundred billion dollars annually is one White House estimate of the cost to U.S. businesses imposed by economic espionage carried out predominantly by our allies-France, Israel, Germany, South Korea, and Japan being among the top culprits. Peter Schweizer was the first to really put this issue on the table, and he deserves a lot of credit. Neither Congress nor the Administration are yet prepared to take this issue seriously, and this is a grave mistake, for in the 21st Century information is the seed corn of prosperity, and our allies are eating our seed corn.