Gentleman Spy

More than any other American, Allen Dulles embodied and came to symbolize the Central Intelligence Agency, which he headed for more than eight years (1953-61). His life is an incredible story, so it is all the more remarkable that in the 25 years since his death in 1969 at the age of 75, there has been until now no full-length study of the man. But with "Gentleman Spy", Peter Grose has produced a biography full of surprises and all sorts of new information, giving us not only Dulles's life but, in the process, a panorama of our times, from Versailles to the downfall of the Third Reich, from the onset of the Cold War to the Bay of Pigs. This is a biography which sticks closely to the man, his character and the influence on history which was truly and uniquely his, not simply the work of the agency under his command. What emerges is a portrait of Allen Dulles as one of the architects and early commanders of the Cold War, a man whose profound self-confidance gave a vigorous pugnacity to American foreign policy for a decade.