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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.
“The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction
If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation’s communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union’s top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States’s nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky’s name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain’s obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.
Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky’s nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre’s latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man’s hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.
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Uncovers the true story behind the Cold War’s most intrepid female spy Chronicles the extraordinary story of what happened after British officials planted a dead body behind enemy lines during WWII Fall into this gripping tale of loyalty, love, and the thin and shifting line between fidelity and betrayal, based on recently declassified World War II files The incredible untold story of World War II’s greatest secret fighting force—Britain’s Special Air Force The untold story of one of the greatest deceptions of World War II, and of the extraordinary spies who achieved it The unbelievable true story of Kim Philby, the Cold War’s most infamous spy
Publisher : Crown; Reprint edition (August 6, 2019)
Language : English
Paperback : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 1101904216
ISBN-13 : 978-1101904213
Item Weight : 10.8 ounces
Dimensions : 5.16 x 0.86 x 7.95 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book suspenseful, intriguing, and riveting. They describe it as a great story and a good read. Readers praise the research quality as excellent and monumental. They appreciate the writing style as extraordinary, detailed, and easy to follow. Opinions differ on the difficulty to put down and pacing. Some find it hard to put it down, while others say it drags terribly in part 1.
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