“The Good Spy” by Kai Bird – No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

There are many ways to make a difference in this world; we all seek it to some extent, whether it is to make a big difference in the world or a small difference in our own lives. If one thing seems certain, it’s that true influence on the course of events comes from action and presence rather than the contrary.

However, there are always some exceptions to the rule, and CIA operative Robert Ames was certainly one of them, for it is possible that his absence from the books of history had as great of an impact on the situation on the Middle East as his presence would have.

In The Good Spy by Kai Bird, we are treated to a biography of this rather extraordinary man, detailing the role he played as an intelligence officer in the Middle East during the 1980s, the kind of person he was, as well as the kind of power and potential he held in his hands to create peace rather than the chaos we are witnessing today.

For those who have not yet heard of him, Kai Bird is renowned for his exceptionally well-researched, detailed and captivating biographies of political figures, so this subject is precisely what he excels at.

The information he provides us in here comes from a number of sources, including: many interviews with Ames’ widow, hundreds of private letters written by Ames himself, interviews with former and current Israeli, American and Palestinian intelligence officers, and the author’s own time spent living as a neighbor to Ames at the American embassy in Beirut.

In other words, as you can guess, this book is very accurate and factual in its nature, providing us with many insights into not only Ames’ personal life and nature as a person, but also to the development of events in the Middle East, how the politics worked, what various intelligence officers were actually trying to do, and basically how the Middle East came to be where it is today.

As with most people who have read this book, the part which intrigued me the most was Bird’s take on what would have happened had Ames not been assassinated and continued to develop his approach to Middle Eastern politics, one founded on kindness as well as the formation of meaningful connections.

Though it may feel at certain points that Bird is letting fantasy cloud his judgment in terms of what could have been, he does maintain a down-to-Earth outlook on it for the most part and provides a very interesting alternative scenario, and also exploring in the process the idea of whether or not peace is better achieved through kindness rather than force.

To conclude, if you are interested in learning about Middle Eastern politics during the past decades, the behind-the-scenes workings which happened in intelligence agencies, or simply the life of Robert Ames himself, then The Good Spy is certainly worth your consideration in my opinion.

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Kai Bird Personal site Kai Bird is an American author and columnist whose most well-known works are biographies revolving around political figures. Amongst many awards, including Tom J. Watson and Guggenheim fellowships, he received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.