Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam documents in all-inclusive detail how Washington spent decades nurturing ties with the anti-Communist Islamic right, a strategy that was supposed to impede Soviet expansion and curb the development of Arab nationalism. That strategy, author Robert Dreyfuss argues, came back to haunt the United States in the 1990s, most notably on Sept. 11, 2001. To back his case, Dreyfuss scoured archives and conducted countless interviews with Washington insiders: policy-makers, CIA officers, defense officials and foreign-service leaders. He taps details to fuel his argument that our well-funded – at times overt and at times covert – drive to create an Islamic bloc via alliances with radicals in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan was a most grave miscalculation with a worst-nightmare outcome: the emergence of the brand of Islamic terrorism we see today. His meticulous research includes a recurring examination of the relationship between Western banks and the Islamic right. While the level of detail and the number of names, relationships and events in Devil's Game can overwhelm, this book is a must-read for those hoping to understand the geopolitics of our times. -- Jeanie Straub

An ambitious book that attempts to describe the contradictions of American policies towards far right islamist groups over the last 60 or so years. It is useful and at times insightful, but I found it limited, mostly because there were many points where the author seemed to overgeneralize or even misrepresent nuances and details in his attempt to present a coherent bigger picture. Perhaps this is because the author is not a specialist in many of the areas and topics which the book covers. Its well worth a read, but I get the feeling the world still awaits a definitive account of the attempts by the United States to cultivate and harness the Islamist far right to further its foreign policy objectives. ( )

This helped me to understand a lot of the current situation. A depressing sequence of interventions leading to disaster upon disaster. ( )