A workmanlike elucidation of the employment history of two nutters and the paranoiacs who hired them, and the F'd Up things they did. It started with wealthy clients of Sullivan &Cromwell, changing governments in Central America to tweak their ROI (return on investment). ...Your heart goes out to Sukarno, that Indonesian playboy and idealist, trying to steer his newly independent country through the treacherous straits of the Cold War stare down. Sukarno travels across the US and wows the average American, then after he goes to Moscow the CIA goes after his countrymen like the L.A. cops on Rodney King as Sukarno cries "Can't we all just get along?" The author gives us a slow burn, and a fair portrayal of the context of Cold War paranoia in which these two brothers gleefully and fearfully shot, tortured and bombed their way through the nascent democracies of the third world. 
 SPOILER: the author gives us a terrific oh snap at the end of the book, viz.: 
 "The half century of history that has unfolded since Foster and Allen passed from the scene suggests that they share responsibility for much that has gone wrong with the world. The blame, however, does not end with them. To gaze at their portraits and think, "They did it," would be to reassuring. It would also be unfair. Americans who seek to understand the roots of their country's trouble in the world should not look at Foster and Allen's portraits but in a mirror. 
 Diego Rivera's mural Glorious Victory [portraying the Dulles brothers] should not be in the basement of the Pushkin Museum, it should be a Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington. Keeping it out of view allows Americans to ignore realities that many wish to ignore. It encourages the childlike belief that since bad things are done by bad people, they will stop happening when the bad people are gone. 
 ... Rather than forget or vilify them, however, Americans should embrace them. Their stories are full of deep meaning for the United States. They are us. We are them."