This book is intense in its treatment of various dangerous characters. The pedophile character, Pruitt Rumsey, is hardly the beast. He may seem evil but he's really just a broken human, predictable in his violence. The real villain of this book is Munson Dyckler, manipulating people and events, possibly at the beck and call of whoever is paying his bills. Owen Rheinsdorf, the main character, approaches right action as if it's a hot tea kettle - consider but don't touch. The action scenes move well and are bound to get the reader's emotions going strongly, often with frustration at not being able to reach into the novel and stop the rich, cigar-chewing Dyckler. Sitting in his library, this crony of someone(s) rich thinks nothing of ruining or ending lives or ambitions. Those he manipulates carry a strange mix of duty and want while serving the same human master. It's not really a pretty picture of Intelligence. Hersh is questioning leadership motivation in this country. And that lends a kind of eerieness to this pre-911 novel. I would recommend Burton Hersh's The Nature of the Beast to readers who enjoy political intrigue, conspiracies and mysteries.

The Nature Of The Beast by Burton Hersh is a novel about Owen Rheinsdorf, an ex-CIA operations specialist who gets dragged out of retirement and plunged into a deadly conflict with a delusional demagogue and a psychopathic, pedophile assassin. The Nature Of The Beast is recommended as a grippingly written saga, crafted with a firm grounding in the history of secret conflicts in Vietnam, Portugal, Uruguay, Panama, and Moscow, and having the profound double impact of both realism and high-stakes tension.

In "The Nature of the Beast," Burton Hersh's new novel detailing the ongoings of the American intelligence community, Owen Rheinsdorf, ex-CIA operations specialist, is brought from retirement, without much say in the matter, by his former boss Munson Dyckler for one last hurrah. Pruitt Rumsey-pedophile, assassin-and Bunker Doyle, a firebrand rightwing talk-show host turned presidential candidate a la Rush Limbaugh, make worthy antagonists. Does this domestic affair fall outside the CIA's jurisdiction? If the answer is Yes, Hersh isn't telling, and he should know, having documented the Central Intelligence Agency in his book "The Old Boys," published in 1992 by Scribner. Balancing out the demands made by the historicity of "The Nature of the Beast," and the sexual dysfunction of Pruitt Rumsey, Hersh has developed a first-rate love story between Owen Rheinsdorf and Lauren Dyckler, some years his junior and daughter of the boss. Hersh seems to be telling us, If some parts of human nature, and history, are tough to face, some parts are a pleasure, too.

Hersh's 1972 biography "The Education of Edward Kennedy" is still, after nearly three decades, one of the best Kennedy books out there. "The Shadow President," however, fails to live up to the high standards Hersh set in his earlier book. While "The Shadow President" includes a lively account of the 1994 Kennedy-Romney Senate race, the rest of the book is dreadfully dull, containing many well-worn anecdotes and familiar tales that have been better recounted elsewhere. Replete with glaring factual errors (Maryland senator Paul Sarbanes is described as representing Delaware, and more strangely, Wyoming's Alan Simpson is referred to a senator from Nevada) which a self-described "Washington insider" like Hersh should not have made. Hersh offers his own highly-speculative and undocumented "insights" as fact, while blasting other authors like Joe McGinniss who have done the same. His tendency to quote at length anonymous sources identified merely as "a longtime friend" or "an influential senior staffer" is also grating and serves to further degrade a frustratingly slapdash book. Hersh can and has done better, and the sense one gets reading "The Shadow President" is that this book was quickly hobbled together to make a few bucks. All in all, a disappointing sequel to a classic work of political reportage.

Although the book does contain some factual errors, overall it is nicely written and well researched. Love him or hate him, the senior senator from Massachusetts HAS and CONTINUES to wield signifigant influence over domestic and international affairs.

At this point, Kennedy wields more self earned power and influence than anybody could have imagined when he used to be compared to Jack and Bobby. Kennedy would not be as influential as a president.

Too many Kennedy books either laud or trash the family. Some nitpick over voting records, while many focus entirely on their personal lives. In this book, author Hersh, gives us a balanced and fair look at Ted Kennedy's long and distinguished senate career, without ignoring Kennedy's flaws that have kept him from moving down to the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. Hersh has been following Kennedy for years, and is trusted enough by the senator to have rare access, but a good enough journalist and author to not be compromised by friendship. The book contains lots of inside analysis of Kennedy's realtionship with his large family and even larger staff, his 1980 presidential run which failed but reinforced Kennedy's role as a liberal leader, and his continued effort to shape national policy while trying to overcome his image problems. For those who have followed Teddy Kennedy's career over the years, this book does a good job of putting it all together.

The trouble with Burton Hersh is that he never bothered to read what he wrote. If he had he'd have realized that it is uncomprehensible. This is partly due to the fact that he is a functional illiterate. He doesn't have a basic understanding of what a sentence is.He also has a very poor choice of words. He uses words that he obviously does not know what they mean.

Secondly I am old enough to know that most of his "information" is sheer hogwash. It's either badly distorted or false. It's a figment of his imagination. I am 76 and fought in World War II and knew some of those he writes about. They are mostly bland liveless bureaucrats. Not the bizarre creatures he depicts. I have suffered through 83 pages and can sight any number of lies and distortions.

I was born in 1950, so most of the key players in the story were dead and buried before I even started to learn what a bunch of assholes they were. There is certainly much in this book to support that attitude, a good deal more than I realized even as a screaming anti-Viet war protester in 1969-70. The comprehensive fascist economic,legal and social entanglements - especially the Dulles Boys, in Germany, Italy, England, Rumania, etc. are laid bare, with 64 pages of footnotes! Before, during and after the big bad war. Hersh provides the basis for a rather more realistic appraisal of the early-mid cold war, but only hints at the outrage aroused in the Soviets (not just bad old boy Stalin)when we scooped up all those Nazis- Gehlen and hundreds more, and put them right back to work on our payroll, within months if not weeks after VE Day. However, most of the names dropped by Mr. Hersh mean nothing to me, or to the very large majority of the literate population alive today. I occasionally had a very tough time understanding his repeated but highly variable references to dozens of old Wall Street law firms, German corporations, and the go-betweens and flunkies skittering around in every chapter. A big chart with arrows and color coding would be helpful, and a few lists of the old characters. A glossary would also be good, to define the arcane Brit, Frenchy and German lingo that is tossed in like pepper on your salad. At times even my unabridged dictionary was no help. I suppose that 20 years from now, almost no one will have the motivation to plow through the pointless bric-a-brac to find the fascinating historical data. A pity.

This is a remarkable book by a remarkable writer. It caused howls of protest from the CIA and US media elite when first published, but there is no doubt that Hersh has the goods: the book is now on the CIA reading list!
Hersh himself clearly did vast independent primary research and interview work for the book. His anatomy of the Dulles brothers, Frank Wisner, Wild Bill Donovan, Bill Casey,and the creepy but omnipresent Carmel Offie is superb. Wall Street staffed the US intelligence elite, in 1941 as in 2001---and oil and high finance were and still are that world's elixir. Lastly, the index and notes are a boon to future researchers. [Interestingly, none of the Dulles-adoring biographies published of late cites any of Hersh's work. Hmmmm.]
Hersh has a novelist's skill in bringing this cast of real characters to life: the descriptions are unforgettable, but the research, especially to me, a fellow digger in contemporary intelligence history, is awe-inspiring. Hersh has not written a book predicated on others' books: there is a treasure trove here of original research, especially in relation to the Wall Street connections to Nazi business and, critically, to the SAFEHAVEN investigation, rediscovery of which of course broke the Holocaust gold story some years back.
But most of all, this book is hugely entertaining and not a little amusing, told in a confidingly baroque language, it's true, but imagine you're hearing these stories in a clubland chair, from someone Who Knows Stuff, of a long and fascinating evening. Listen carefully: your attention'll be rewarded.
This is nuanced, detailed writing about complicated history: one's reading effort, I found, rewards---this is an important book laying open the defining people and defining events of the US intelligence empire. It's no surprise Hersh is in high demand as an intelligence expert since Sept 11th, as the CIA and its watchers look for answers.