by Kai Bird (Get the Book)Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bird (coauthor, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer) pre-sents CIA intelligence officer Robert Ames (1934-83) as a serious intellectual, a devoted family man, and a hardworking, idealistic professional. After preparing readers for Ames's death in the massive 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut, Bird takes us back through Ames's development as an expert in Arabic languages, history, and politics who increasingly -focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict. By 1980, he was a recognized policy advisor within the CIA, state department, and White House. Bird interweaves his subject's commitment to finding a solution to the Palestine dilemma with tracking the mounting unrest in Lebanon and increasing terrorism by Palestinians, Israelis, and militant Shiites. Readers are drawn to Ames and his effort to be a "good spy," building solutions, even as the U.S. government, buffeted by partisan pressures, adhered to no one constructive policy. VERDICT This is a moving biography within a balanced presentation of the complex diplomacy over the Palestinian quest for statehood and the Israeli need for security, complicated by a disintegrating Lebanon and a revolutionary Iran. Bird's view of a CIA committed to analysis and policy development contrasts with the agency depicted in Hugh Wilford's recent America's Great Game. --Library Journal
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