Answered to No Elected President at All
Allen Dulles answered to no elected president, and David Talbot spends twenty-five hours and twenty-three minutes of this audiobook proving it. The Devil's Chessboard is Talbot's account of Dulles' rise to become the longest-serving director of the CIA, built from newly surfaced government documents, interviews with the children of prominent intelligence officials, and the personal correspondence of Dulles' own wife and mistress. Talbot, who founded Salon.com before turning to long-form investigative history, frames Dulles as a man who considered himself accountable to the wealthy interests and foreign networks he'd cultivated across decades, including former Nazi-linked cartels and organized crime figures, rather than to any American electorate.
The book's most explosive material comes in its final stretch, where Talbot connects Dulles' methods, and his ouster by John F. Kennedy in 1961, to the CIA's activities in the years leading up to Kennedy's assassination in 1963. This isn't a fringe theory presented in isolation; Talbot builds toward it methodically, using the same documentary approach he applies to Dulles' earlier career, though the conclusions remain contested territory even among readers sympathetic to his broader argument about unchecked intelligence power.
Talbot's previous book, Brothers, examined the Kennedy family's own inner circle and the aftermath of JFK's assassination from a different angle, and The Devil's Chessboard functions as something like a companion piece, approaching the same historical moment from the perspective of the intelligence apparatus Dulles built rather than the family it affected most directly. Readers of Brothers will recognize Talbot's documentary rigor here, applied to a subject with an even wider institutional reach.
Altschuler Holds Clarity Across Twenty-Five Hours
Peter Altschuler narrates the full twenty-five hours without losing clarity or momentum, which matters enormously for a book this dense with names, agencies, and overlapping decades of Cold War maneuvering. Altschuler's pacing gives listeners room to absorb complicated institutional detail without ever feeling like the book is dragging, a real achievement across a runtime this long.
Reviewers frequently place this book in conversation with other JFK-era investigations. One listener, Lucy M. Edwards, describes it as the next part of the puzzle after James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable, while another cites Oliver Stone's documentary JFK Revisited as a useful companion. For listeners already engaged with that broader body of assassination-era research, The Devil's Chessboard offers one of the more thoroughly documented entries, grounded specifically in Dulles' own paper trail rather than speculation alone.
Fans of Cold War history more broadly, from the Berlin Blockade through the Bay of Pigs, will find Dulles threaded through nearly every major crisis of the period, and Talbot's decision to center a single figure across that whole stretch gives listeners a throughline that more diffuse institutional histories of the CIA often lack. Following one man's career across three decades of shifting global crises makes the sheer scope of Cold War intelligence work easier to hold onto than a more fragmented, chronological survey might.
Talbot also spends time on the network of former intelligence officials, business figures, and European contacts Dulles maintained well after leaving formal government service, arguing that this informal network extended his influence long past his official tenure at the CIA. That afterlife of influence is part of what gives the book's later chapters their unsettled, still-relevant quality. Listeners interested in how institutional power outlasts any single person's formal position will find this thread one of the more quietly persuasive parts of the book, even for readers who remain skeptical of Talbot's more explosive claims about the Kennedy assassination specifically.
No Flipping Back to Double-Check a Name
Twenty-five hours is a serious commitment, and this is dense, name-heavy investigative history rather than a breezy narrative nonfiction read. Listeners unfamiliar with the basic outlines of Cold War intelligence history may want to expect a steeper learning curve than the book's narrative momentum initially suggests, since Talbot assumes a reasonable baseline of context even while explaining plenty along the way.
The book's central argument, that Dulles' CIA played a role in Kennedy's assassination, remains a contested claim outside the specific community of researchers Talbot is in conversation with, and listeners should approach that portion of the book as one interpretation built on real documentary work rather than settled historical consensus. Talbot's own journalistic background gives the reporting credibility, but the most explosive claims deserve the same scrutiny a listener would apply to any single-author account of a still-debated event.
Listening to twenty-five hours of name-dense investigative history presents a different challenge than reading the same material in print, where flipping back to double-check a name or an earlier claim is trivial. Audio listeners without a way to easily cross-reference earlier chapters may want to take notes on key figures as they're introduced, particularly during the sections juggling multiple intelligence officials, foreign contacts, and overlapping operations across different countries and years.
A Natural Next Stop After Douglass or Stone
Readers of Cold War history, CIA institutional accounts, and JFK assassination research will find this among the more rigorously sourced entries in a crowded field. Anyone who has already read Douglass or watched Stone's documentary work will find The Devil's Chessboard a natural next stop, given how directly reviewers connect the three.
Listeners newer to Cold War intelligence history might benefit from pairing this with a more general primer before diving in, since Talbot writes for an audience already comfortable with the era's basic cast of characters and events rather than building that foundation from scratch within the book itself. For readers ready to commit twenty-five hours to a meticulously documented, genuinely provocative account of American power, Peter Altschuler's narration makes The Devil's Chessboard an easier listen than its density might suggest.
Before You Press Play
- Read by: Peter Altschuler sustains twenty-five hours of dense institutional history without losing narrative drive or clarity.
- At its heart: CIA history, Cold War power, the JFK assassination
- Vibe: Grim, meticulous, quietly furious
- Short version: A major commitment that rewards listeners already curious about Dulles, the CIA, or the Kennedy assassination.
Common Questions
How long is The Devil's Chessboard audiobook?
It runs twenty-five hours and twenty-three minutes, a substantial commitment for a densely documented history.
Does this audiobook claim Allen Dulles was involved in the JFK assassination?
Yes, Talbot builds toward that argument methodically in the book's final stretch, though the claim remains contested outside the community of researchers he's in conversation with, and listeners should treat it as one documented interpretation rather than settled fact.
Is this audiobook a biography or a history of the CIA?
Both. The Devil's Chessboard functions as a biography of Allen Dulles and, through him, a history of the CIA's early Cold War expansion under his leadership.
Who narrates The Devil's Chessboard audiobook?
Peter Altschuler narrates the full twenty-five hour runtime, sustaining clarity and momentum across the book's dense cast of names and agencies.
