Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Dec 21, 2008

brian rated it:

there’s something i call ‘generational narcissism’ which is basically the naive belief that one’s generation is special and different and unique for no other reason than that one is part of it. there are a few varieties:

1) new-age generational narcissism: the belief that the ‘universe’ (that vague overused and totally unhelpful term) has destined some serious astronomical, astrological, apocalyptical and/or spiritual kind of paradigm shift to occur in one’s time. i.e. age of aquari More...

65 comments like (29 people liked it)

May 21, 2009

Mike rated it:

Sheesh. What Brian said. What many say -- this is a precise, unshowy, utterly-persuasive account of the development and failures of Bush's (or is that Cheney's?) torture policies. I'd read much of this work in The New Yorker, but the effect of the integrated narrative is as compelling a critique as you could find.

I'm fascinated by the recent rumblings of the newly-visible Dick Cheney, stomping about cable news to assert out of the corner of his mouth that torture works, that it's More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2012

Will rated it:

The title comes from Dick Cheney’s vow to go to the “Dark Side” in the battle against terrorism. There is a wealth here of drill-down detail about the mechanisms by which America abandoned the constitution in favor of a unitary, imperial president (and really vice president) who believes that l’estat est moi.

I have read a fair number of books that delve into the Bush administration and nowhere have I seen the comprehensive depth Mayer has given to her examination of how America has More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2008

Paul rated it:

Well, I finished the book. Quick read, and most of it I had read already in the pages of The New Yorker. Still, it is nice and convenient to have Jane Mayer's articles all in one continuous narrative. The book, needless to say, is quite harrowing. There is no doubt that the American Government is torturing. Bush, Cheney, et alia have all admitted as much, only they don't, of course, use the word "torture", thinking like little school kids if they avoid the word they'll also avoid More...

39 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 30, 2008

Maggie rated it:

"He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process becomes a monster himself." - Friedrich Nietzsche

In reaction to Britain's brutal treatment of American prisoners of war, George Washington vowed that this new Democracy would "take a higher road." Thus, the U.S. military doctrine was born, based upon the belief that "Brutality undermines military discipline and strengthens the enemy's resolve, while displays of humanity could be used More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2008

Bill rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

David rated it:

This book makes my blood boil. These people, who not only authorized torture, but encouraged it, have disgraced our country and screwed up our struggle against jihadism. It is a story of incompetence and arrogance, centered on the Vice Presidency and the VP's grey eminence, David Addington.

Notable in the book are the stories of honorable men with military and conservative backgrounds who could not stomach what was going on and resisted it.

Also notable is the argument that More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 25, 2008

Dr. Carl Ludwig Dorsch rated it:

We had high expectations of this work, which though perhaps unfair, were disappointed. Hoping for a fierce and well ordered indictment, though indictment there was what we all too often found ourselves upon was a more-or-less (given the inherent difficulty of access) complete, but often scattered, episodic and anecdotal tour of the federal legal bureaucracy as it dealt with the possession and interrogation of captives in the G.W. Bush administration’s “War on Terror.” Here are si More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 22, 2008

Map rated it:

Required reading for every American. Jane Mayer documents how a handful of people in the Bush Administration changed the moral course of America and tarnished our global reputation in the name of "keeping us safe." Benjamin Franklin said that those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserver neither liberty nor safety. Well, that's pretty much where we are at. Yes, there have been no more attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. But that "safety" was not a product of torture. Jus More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Diane rated it:

I heard and read about some of the main facts written in this book, but when Jane Mayer put the story altogether I became even more sickened by the administration's (Cheney and Addington's's) authorization of the capture and torture of suspected terrorists, keeping them without charges of crimes in order to keep their illegal activities secret in Guatanamo and other hidden torture sites throughout the world. (When the stories leaked out, they then attempted to grant immunity to themselves and th More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2009

Jens rated it:

This is a page turner. Well written, and reasonably well organized. And juicy. I knew quite a bit of it from listening to interviews with the author, but it hadn't sunk in in the same way. I enjoyed remembering where I was when a piece of news broke, or a decision was handed down (particularly Hamdan), and reading about the background.

Of course, now Obama's in, and Bush is out so there's less need to read this material, right? </strawman>

You know these peopl More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 07, 2009

James rated it:

I found in this book a great deal of often scattered information. Much of it I was already familiar with from other people's investigations of the torture policy of the White House and of clandestine U.S. interrogation research since WWII. The book did little to pull together Ms. Mayer's discoveries or provide a coherent narrative. I found myself creating a timeline to keep track of who knew what when, said what to whom when, etc. It may be a book helpful to military and presidential historians, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 22, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

For me, Mayer's book brought to mind a line from Yeats (one of my favorite poets)..."The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." In this case, it's Cheney, Rumsfeld, John Yoo, David Addington, and a host of other White House appointees whose dogmatic belief that coersion and torture are the only way to extract information from alleged terrorists (despite hard evidence to contrary - the best evidence we got out of anyone came from FBI interrogators More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Barb added it

a book i struggled to complete, and read several books inbetween.

a lot of facts, a lot of "players", and the worst part of it, is that it is all true.

Americans should be very thankful that they have a "new leader" and the clandestine Bush Government has been exiled.

I understand that after 911, the world struggled to cope with the great loss of the American people. We empathized, we sympathized, we cried, and had our hearts torn out by it. But as we all hopped on the "b More...

0 comments like

Dec 25, 2008

Marcus rated it:

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We have to work the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.

I remember when VP Cheney made this statement in late 2001. It gave me pause at the time and I wondered what he meant. Jane Mayers book shows where The Bush Administration took the int More...

0 comments like

Jun 29, 2011

Elliot rated it:

Undermining the Constitution? How about accruing power to the Presidency over Congress, even the Supreme Court, to wage torture? These were the legal statements and hijinks of David Addington “Cheney’s Cheney”, John Yoo, Cheney and Gonzales after 9/11; they justified throwing away all legal processes and got little actionable intelligence (after renditioning and torturing a number of innocents, and shutting up the real Al Qedaniks). They created a black hole of evil amidst CIA incompetence and More...

0 comments like

Mar 20, 2011

Gerald rated it:

This book boils down to a summary of the tortures inflicted primarily by the CIA upon suspected enemies to the United States and more generally the West. The author paints a picture of an administration which placed the security of the people it was elected to protect above any common standards of decency when it comes to the treatment of suspects. One of the most memorable examples in the book is of a man who left home for a vacation only to be detained by border guards and subsequently torture More...

0 comments like

Jun 22, 2010

Alison rated it:

Combined with the lessons learned from Angler, The Dark Side by Jane Mayer has given me a greater appreciation of how power was wielded in the executive branch during the Bush years. On many occasions while reading this, I was indignantly furious that a small group of appointed officials, the so-called "War Council", so easily set into motion yet another erosion of the U.S.'s supposed moral commitments (in this case, the disavowal of torture). I assume that this was the desired effec More...

0 comments like

Nov 08, 2009

Emily rated it:

This is an ambitious work of reportage that discusses how far over the line the U.S. stepped in its pursuit of the war on terror, and why. In regard to the actual definition of torture, Mayer uses interviews to show opposing viewpoints rather than presenting much legal research of her own. The book is more about the political situation that allowed the U.S. to operate on "the dark side," despite many warning signs that this was illegal or at the very least imprudent and ineffective.
More...

0 comments like

Sep 21, 2009

Daniel rated it:

Not since I read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine have I clenched my fists while reading. Jane Mayer’s vitriolic political investigation is a fitting companion piece to Klein’s humanist manifesto, detailing the gruesome policies that were unlawfully created in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Through countless interviews and in-depth character description, Mayer shows how a country’s human rights record was irreperably damaged by a paranoid and deceptive government, willing to pay any pr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 12, 2009

Kurt rated it:

I guess I'm getting to be squarely middle-aged; I find these days I'm tearing through non-fiction of a political nature -- books that help me secure my place in these insane times. Mayer's book is dense, detailed, and disturbing. I can't figure out whether this kind of writing is politically partisan ... or if it's just a case of the scary f***king truth being succinctly reported. It was helpful for a scatter-brained reader like myself to hop around a bit from section to section, then circle bac More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2009

Damon rated it:

Mayer expertly reconstructs the legal black hole inside of which the Bush administration disregarded the Constitution and the law in its prosecution of the War on Terror. The bureaucratic apparatus that results evokes a miniature Soviet police state, where suspects disappear at the whim of the state, are tortured or killed, and then reappear months or years later -- or not at all. Particularly compelling is a case of mistaken identity in which a German car salesman is abducted and tortured for a More...

0 comments like

Jun 19, 2009

Stop added it

Read the STOP SMILING interview with author Jane Mayer

Lift Every Voice
By James Hughes

(This interview originally appeared in the third annual STOP SMILING 20 Interviews Issue)

After millions embraced Barack Obama on election night in Chicago, though still weeks before the record crowds that flooded the National Mall and its tributaries became flyover country for a departing president bound for Dallas dormancy, I spoke with author Jane Mayer about the range of emo More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2010

Ariel rated it:

An incredibly well-researched, gripping and damning account of how America lost the moral high ground in the war on terror. Although much of the information is not new, this book neatly ties it together and provides a sense of the zeitgeist around Washington as well as an insider viewpoint, plus plenty of the actual details of the terror program.
The book was focused and well-organized, and I love the quotes at the beginning of the chapters. For the most part, the writing style is competent More...

0 comments like

Dec 08, 2009

Jesse rated it:

This book presents a heartbreaking parade, not just of horrifically abused detainees but earnest do-gooding government employees who actually believe in American ideals. The horror film atmosphere is most obvious in the scripted "takedowns" in which teams come in the night, but in the "don't go near the old farmhouse!" shock when some would be public servant says "we don't torture! not this executive!"only to proven desperately, tragically wrong. At the center of t More...

0 comments like

Apr 14, 2010

Kristiana rated it:

I do not often read nonfiction books. I feel like I am flexing/building my literate muscles when I do.

I thought The Dark Side would be more like, what I assume, Shock Doctrine is about, the way the war was advertised. The Dark Side really focuses on how we treated those we suspected of being terrorists after 9/11.

At first I did not know how much to believe or how to strain the information presented through any sort of unbiased filter. I would not be inclined to read the e More...

0 comments like

Aug 05, 2011

Mark added it

Some Justice Department, CIA, Bush administration (Gonzales, Chaney's Chaney Addington, et al) insiders may need to be brought to justice for secret approval and systemized implementation of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that went around established channels. Regardless of how effective these may have proved to be (and the author's position is that their effectiveness was questionable) we are all made in the image of God!

I am far from a believer in anything in any book More...

0 comments like

Nov 04, 2009

Andy rated it:

The book was so well done that it made me question some of our tactics used on terrorist detainees.
One of the more interesting aspects of this book is that torture/Geneva Convention issues were issue being discussed within the political realm, but more likely than not, it was a power grab for the Executive Branch in which they tried to regain powers they lost after Watergate.

Another thing that was very clearly brought to light is that fact that lots of peopple will do illeg More...

0 comments like

Dec 21, 2010

Eli added it

“We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.” – then-Vice Preside More...

0 comments like

Aug 15, 2009

Michael rated it:

Clear, lucid ,reporting, calmly argued. It shows a murderous clan, led by a cowardly Dick Cheney,an incoherent George Bush, and as a pair of the most feckless pair of morons, John Yoo and David Addington (?).Really, what seems to have motivated each and everyone of these rampant fools is unbridled fear, and when that fear had a focus it was the fear of being held accountable for the 9/11 attack. And their chief tactic seems to have been to yell that the bad guys are "over there", and, More...

0 comments like

reviews