The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold WarNEW 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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Once again, the MI6 officers went over Gordievsky's emergency escape plan, code-named PIMLICO, that had been drawn up seven years earlier in the hope that it would never have to be activated. MI6 had never exfiltrated anyone from the ...
Once again, the MI6 officers went over Gordievsky's emergency escape plan, code-named PIMLICO, that had been drawn up seven years earlier in the hope that it would never have to be activated. MI6 had never exfiltrated anyone from the ...
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“There is no such thing as a former KGB man,” the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin once said. This was an exclusive club to join—and an impossible one to leave. Entering the ranks of the KGB was an honor and a duty to those with ...
“There is no such thing as a former KGB man,” the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin once said. This was an exclusive club to join—and an impossible one to leave. Entering the ranks of the KGB was an honor and a duty to those with ...
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He recorded it in the language laboratory and played it to some fellow students. They were appalled. “You must destroy this at once, Oleg, and never mention these things again.” Suddenly fearful, he wondered if one of his classmates had ...
He recorded it in the language laboratory and played it to some fellow students. They were appalled. “You must destroy this at once, Oleg, and never mention these things again.” Suddenly fearful, he wondered if one of his classmates had ...
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For once, she openly voiced her anger at the regime and the apparatus of oppression that sustained it. Oleg pointed out that he would not be working for the internal KGB but in the foreign section, the First Chief Directorate, ...
For once, she openly voiced her anger at the regime and the apparatus of oppression that sustained it. Oleg pointed out that he would not be working for the internal KGB but in the foreign section, the First Chief Directorate, ...
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... amoral bureaucracy, a place at once ruthless, prissy, and puritanical, where international crimes were conceived with punctilious attention to detail. From its earliest days, Soviet intelligence operated without ethical restraint.
... amoral bureaucracy, a place at once ruthless, prissy, and puritanical, where international crimes were conceived with punctilious attention to detail. From its earliest days, Soviet intelligence operated without ethical restraint.
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LibraryThing Review
Umsögn notanda - LynnB - LibraryThingAmazing book with great research and strong writing I didn't know anything about Mr. Gordievsky, so the story was a real page-tuner for me. It made me reflect on how the world of the people involved ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
Umsögn notanda - charlie68 - LibraryThingA riveting story of a spy and his disillusion with the Soviet system and his dilemma in betraying it. Some of the situations are funny and perhaps 007 is not so fictional. And don't clean up around park benches too much you might be endangering world peace. Read full review
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The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Ben Macintyre Engin sýnishorn í bođi - 2018 |
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Ben Macintyre Engin sýnishorn í bođi - 2018 |
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Ben Macintyre Engin sýnishorn í bođi - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
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Bókfrćđilegar upplýsingar
| Titill | The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War |
| Höfundur | Ben Macintyre |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Útgefandi | Crown, 2018 |
| ISBN | 1101904208, 9781101904206 |
| Length | 384 síđur |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |