Reviews for Secret Agencies: U. S. Intelligence in a Hostile World

The average rating for Secret Agencies: U. S. Intelligence in a Hostile World based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-21 00:00:00 Robert L Buchin Hmm... my notes have Soviet in the title in place of Russian; publisher's revision or Freudian slip on my part? I'm pretty sure I had a different cover, but it was a library copy and may have been rebound. Anyway. Stites argues from an organic model of culture in which people participate in the creation of popular culture. Thus patterns in popular taste reflect attitudes to the family, foreigners, money, etc. Stites states that "Political control of culture has been a hallmark in this [20th] century" but argues that just because culture is created by or for elites does not mean that it cannot also be popular.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-07-22 00:00:00 Kendra Gray This is a useful but very dry 209-page info dump with very little holding it together structurally ' also I get the impulse, but saying that what you're doing is 'personal' and contains loads of anecdotal evidence, then refusing to draw a sharp line of distinction between your historical sources + just things you heard at dinner parties in the 80s, makes for an untrustworthy account of several topics (most notably what "the people" thought politically and how that impacted culture)