Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Sudan, Bosnia, El Salvador and many other strife-torn countries. A frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, his work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper’s and Outside. He is the author of novels Moonlight Hotel and Triage and of non-fiction books The Man Who Tried to Save the World and The 4 O’Clock Murders, and co-author of War Zones and Inside The League with his brother Jon Lee Anderson.
In the aftermath of WWII, the mandate of the newly formed CIA was to protect democracy around the world from the Soviet Union’s brutal authoritarianism. But as the Cold War escalated, American leaders succumbed to an ideological rigidity that sought to defeat the Soviets at any cost–including toppling democratically-elected governments and earning much of the world’s hatred.
Internationally bestselling author Scott Anderson examines this fall from grace through the riveting exploits of four spies: Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times; Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family; Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis; and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia. Initially driven by the principle of defending democracy, they came to be thwarted by malfeasance at the highest-levels of government. The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men, and how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, abandoned its ideals and managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.
The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, “a sideshow to a sideshow.” As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by four men far removed from the corridors of power.
Curt Pruefer was an effete academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment jihad against British rule. Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Palestine. William Yale was the fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order gain valuable oil concessions. At the center of it all was Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist digging ruins in Syria; by 1919 he was riding into legend at the head of an Arab army, as he fought a rearguard action against his own government and its imperial ambitions.
Based on four years of intensive primary document research, Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.
Starring Scott Anderson. Hosted by Marcello Di Cintio
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