Dear Great Book Guru,  School has opened and we are looking at Labor Day weekend- last chance for breakfast at Sea Cliff Beach Café- a favorite activity of so many of us.  I wonder if you have a really compelling book for me to read as the sun sets on another beautiful Sea Cliff summer?  Labor Day Beach Lounger

Dear Labor Day Beach Lounger, I have spent the last days of August reading a fascinating book: THE BROTHERS by Stephen Kinzer.  He asks the question  ”Why is America so hated in so many parts of the world?” and he answers “ The Dulles Brothers.”  John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles were major players on the world stage throughout most of the twentieth century culminating in the 1950’s when John  Foster served as U.S.Secretary of State and Allen was head of the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. The brothers plotted assassinations, overthrew governments, and saw themselves as singlehandedly  fighting the Cold War.  Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, Guatemala, Korea, most of Africa, and Eastern Europe are just some of the places that felt their wrath -a wrath that at times took on biblical proportions becoming for them truly a battle between good and evil.    Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, Winston Churchill,  Nikita Khrushchev, Patrice Lumumba and Fidel Castro all come in for deft  scrutiny and vivid characterization. Interestingly, his concluding chapter tempers all that came before by placing some of the blame on the American ethos- that the story of the Dulles brothers is really the story of the American people.    Highly recommended!