A mixture of evidence and assumptions in a look at the modern-day, tit-for-tat spy game between America and Moscow. (8-page...
A timely biography that attempts to provide plausible explanations for the motives of alleged FBI double agent Robert Hanssen, whose trial is set to begin on October 29, 2001.
Hanssen was a long-time FBI agent, now accused of selling top-secret information to agents of the Soviet Union, including nuclear secrets and names of other agents (which may have led to the execution of a couple of the men). The obvious question, then, is: Why? And Havill (While Innocents Slept, 2001, etc.) gives many answers, the least being ideological, even though much is made of Hanssen’s ultra-conservatism and his beliefs in the dictates of the Catholic group Opus Dei. Primarily, Hanssen’s motives seemed to be financial: the money he received (in excess of $600,000) got his six children’s private-school educations. It also allowed him to lavish money on a young female stripper in a strange, two-year, nonsexual relationship where he apparently was trying to “save” her. He also did it for the thrill; as a youngster, he was fascinated by spy confessions and espionage books, and he reportedly told a former neighbor, “I’ve wanted to be a spy ever since I was a little boy.” Lastly, he did it to satisfy his ego. The numerous interviews with Hanssen’s friends, neighbors, and childhood acquaintances, which range from sympathy to surprise to I-always-knew-he-was-strange, give a vague picture of Hanssen as someone who craved notoriety and excitement. The most fascinating aspect here—and what perhaps most reveals the man’s true nature—are the samplings of correspondence exchanged over the years between Hanssen (who wrote under the alias of “Ramon Garcia”) and his Soviet contacts, messages usually sent encrypted on computer disks. Overall, though, Havill’s account offers little suspense, even when relating the events on February 18, 2001, which resulted in Hanssen’s ultimate arrest.
A mixture of evidence and assumptions in a look at the modern-day, tit-for-tat spy game between America and Moscow. (8-page b&w photo insert, not seen)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28782-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
