The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉThe celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. 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... [Read More]

  • ASIN: 1101904194
  • ISBN: 1101904194
  • Manufacturer: Crown

Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War

Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War

The thrilling story of two Cold War spies, CIA case officer Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko -- improbable friends at a time when they should have been anything but.In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, DC intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA's counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men, already notorious iconoclasts within their respective agencies, were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the urgent final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends-blood brothers. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, the Russian Mafia, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs of the past half century.In BEST OF ENEMIES, two espionage cowboys reveal how they became key behind-the-scenes players in solving some of the most celebrated spy stories of the twentieth century, including the crucial discovery of the Soviet mole Robert Hanssen, the 2010 Spy Swap which freed Gennady from Soviet imprisonment, and how Robert De Niro played a real-life role in helping Gennady stay alive during his incarceration in Russia after being falsely accused of spying for the Americans. Through their eyes, we see the distinctions between the Russian and American methods of conducting espionage and the painful birth of the new Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, dreams he can roll back to the ideals of the old USSR.

  • ASIN: 1538761319
  • ISBN: 1538761319
  • Manufacturer: Twelve

Presidents of War

Presidents of War

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a preeminent presidential historian comes a “monumental and profoundly important” (Ron Chernow) saga of America’s wartime chief executivesBILL GATES’S SUMMER READING LISTTen years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths.  From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see them struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, their own advisors and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses, families and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. We come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—both physically and emotionally—or were broken by them. Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants in the drama and his findings in original letters, diaries, once-classified national security documents, and other sources help him to tell this story in a way it has not been told before. Presidents of War combines the sense of being there with the overarching context of two centuries of American history. This important book shows how far we have traveled from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race.Praise for Presidents of War"A marvelous narrative. . . . As Beschloss explains, the greatest wartime presidents successfully leaven military action with moral concerns. . . . Beschloss’s writing is clean and concise, and he admirably draws upon new documents. Some of the more titillating tidbits in the book are in the footnotes. . . . There are fascinating nuggets on vir... [Read More]

  • ASIN: 0307409600
  • ISBN: 9780307409607
  • Manufacturer: Crown

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

Discover the secret history of America's submarine warfare in this fast-paced and deeply researched chronicle of adventure and intrigue during the Cold War that reads like a spy thriller. Blind Man's Bluff is an exciting, epic story of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and disaster beneath the sea. This New York Times bestseller reveals previously unknown dramas, such as:The mission to send submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables.How the Navy's own negligence may have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, in 1968.The bitter war between the CIA and the Navy and how it threatened to sabotage one of America's most important undersea missions.The audacious attempt to steal a Soviet submarine with the help of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start. A magnificent achievement in investigative reporting, Blind Man's Bluff reads like a spy thriller, but with one important difference-everything in it is true.

  • ASIN: 1610393589
  • ISBN: 1610393589
  • Brand: Sontag Sherry
  • Manufacturer: PublicAffairs

Cold Fire

Cold Fire

As a DEA agent, Jeremiah “Hawk” Tate was one of the best at taking down drug traffickers. Then the cartels struck back—and destroyed everything he held dear.Five years later, Hawk has retreated from society and is living a quiet life as a Montana wilderness guide. He’s done with the DEA, done with the criminals, and done with the pain left over from his past. But his past isn’t done with him.When a mysterious woman offers him an enormous amount of money to find her lost brother, Hawk knows he should walk away, but, with a flash of gunfire, he gets pulled back in. Surrounded by old enemies and allies, he must face off with a new player planning to flood the market with a lethal drug. This may be the chance for revenge Hawk never thought he’d get.Revised edition: Previously published as Krokodil, this edition of Cold Fire includes editorial revisions.

  • ASIN: B00QKUW8UO
  • Manufacturer: Thomas & Mercer

The Cold War: A New History

The Cold War: A New History

The “dean of Cold War historians” (The New York Times) now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, The Cold War stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.Gaddis is also the author of On Grand Strategy. 

  • ASIN: 0143038273
  • ISBN: 0143038273
  • Brand: Penguin Books
  • Manufacturer: Penguin Books

Backlash: A Thriller (The Scot Harvath Series Book 19)

Backlash: A Thriller (The Scot Harvath Series Book 19)

“Raw emotion, nonstop action, and relentless pacing makes Backlash another one-night read from Brad Thor, who delivers the book to beat in 2019.” —The Real Book Spy #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and #1 Publishers Weekly bestselling author Brad Thor is back with his most gripping thriller yet!In ancient texts, there are stories about men who struck from the shadows, seemingly beyond the reach of death itself. These men were considered part angel, part demon. Their loyalty was to their families, their friends, and their kings. You crossed these men at your peril. And once crossed, there was no crossing back. They were fearless; men of honor who have been known throughout history by different names: Spartan, Viking, Samurai. Today, men like these still strike from the shadows. They are highly prized intelligence agents, military operatives, and assassins. One man is all three. Two days ago, that man was crossed—badly. Now, far from home and surrounded by his enemy, Scot Harvath must battle his way out. With no support, no cavalry coming, and no one even aware of where he is, it will take everything he has ever learned to survive. But survival isn’t enough. Harvath wants revenge. In the most explosive novel Brad Thor has ever written, page after captivating page of action, intrigue, loyalty, and betrayal will keep you hooked until the very last sentence.

  • ASIN: B07L36F3WS
  • Manufacturer: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia

From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the diplomat Putin wants to interrogate—and has banned from Russia—a revelatory, inside account of U.S.-Russia relations from 1989 to the present“A fascinating and timely account of the current crisis in the relationship between Russia and the United States.” —New York Times Book ReviewPutin would need an enemy, and he turned to the most reliable one in Russia’s recent history: the United States and then, by extension, me. In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today’s most contentious and consequential international relationships. As President Barack Obama’s adviser on Russian affairs, McFaul helped craft the United States’ policy known as “reset” that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of U.S.-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president. From the first days of McFaul’s ambassadorship, the Kremlin actively sought to discredit and undermine him, hassling him with tactics that included dispatching protesters to his front gates, slandering him on state media, and tightly surveilling him, his staff, and his family.From Cold War to Hot Peace is an essential account of the most consequential global confrontation of our time.

  • ASIN: B073XCPCF1
  • Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Cold War: A History

The Cold War: A History

"The history of the Cold War has been the history of the world since 1954." So begins The Cold War: A History, a wide-ranging narrative by award-winning political commentator Martin Walker, which was one of the first major studies of its kind. Now that it's over, it's crucial to our future to understand how the Cold War has shaped us and, especially, to recognize it as the economic and political dynamic that determined the structure of today's global economy.From the origins of the Marshall Plan, which revived Europe after World War II, and the strategic decision to rebuild a defeated Japan into a bulwark against China, to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, this authoritative work reveals how the West was built into an economic alliance that overpowered the Soviet economy while also unleashing global economic forces that today challenge the traditional nation-state.The Cold War was more of a global conflict than was either of this century's two major wars; far more than a confrontation between states or even empires, it was, as Martin Walker puts it, "a total war between economic and social systems, an industrial test to destruction."Walker reminds us how easy it is to forget that there were many occasions in the late 1940s in which victory seemed far from assured, and that this uncertainty lent a particular urgency to the efforts of postwar Western leaders. The West continued to be alarmed by the prospect of defeat right up to the Soviet empire's last breath. At the end of the 1940s the fear was generated by communist expansion into Eastern Europe and China; in the 1960s by the prospect of defeat in Vietnam. In the 1970s the failure of détente and the West's economic crisis brought a new generation of dedicated anti-Communists to prominence. For more than forty years, as this detailed analysis makes clear, the outcome of the Cold War was in doubt.We also come to understand how the arms race caused new alignments and shifts in domestic power. As the United States bec... [Read More]

  • ASIN: 0805034544
  • ISBN: 0805034544
  • Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks

The Cold War - Tensions and Rivalries: IB History Course Book: Oxford IB Diploma Program

The Cold War - Tensions and Rivalries: IB History Course Book: Oxford IB Diploma Program

Drive critical, engaged learning and advanced skills development. Enabling comprehensive, rounded understanding, the student-centred approach actively develops the sophisticated skills key to performance in Paper 2. Developed directly with the IB for the 2015 syllabus, this Course Book fully supports the new comparative approach to learning.- Cover the new syllabus in the right level of depth, with rich, thorough subject content- Developed directly the with IB, with the most comprehensive support for the new syllabus with complete support for the comparative approach- Truly engage learners with topical, relevant material that convincingly connects learning with the modern, global world- Streamline your planning, with a clear and thorough structure helping you logically progress through the syllabus- Build the advanced-level skills learners need for Paper 2, with the student-led approach driving active skills development and strengthening exam performance- Integrate Approaches to learning with ATLs like thinking, communication, research and social skills built directly into learning- Help learners think critically about improving performance with extensive examiner insight and samples based on the latest exam format- Build an advanced level, thematic understanding with fully integrated Global Contexts, Key Concepts and TOK - Also available as an Online Course Book

  • ASIN: 0198310218
  • ISBN: 0198310218
  • Brand: imusti
  • Manufacturer: Oxford University Press