About the Author

Bruce Riedel is senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project. Riedel joined Brookings following a thirty-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as a senior adviser to the last four U.S. presidents on South Asia and the Middle East. In 2009 President Obama made him chairman of a strategic review of American policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Riedel has also been an adviser to the British government.

Reviews

a minor gem of elegant history writing. The Kennedy library's compendium of books on the Cuban crisis runs to 13 pages. Yet Riedel's is the first to address the President's role in the Sino-Indian war...There is much in Riedel's short book to pore over. The tale of Nehru's humiliation is poignant... Most of all however, Riedel's book shows the strength of a president who knew when to delegate authority and when to ignore the experts." - Financial Times

"Mr Riedel puts his experience as a former CIA analyst and a senior adviser on the National Security Council to canny use, uncovering details about an American covert operation in Tibet that has been mostly forgotten, though not by China.” - The Economist