Novelistic, fast-paced history.
Cold War–era CIA intrigue, dramatic and brutal.
Prolific author and reporter Blum tells a striking story, though his breezy narrative may put off readers familiar with more judicious CIA–related books, Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes foremost among them. Blum’s central character is Tennent Bagley of the CIA’s elite Soviet Bloc division. He was working in Switzerland in 1962 when KGB agent Yuri Nosenko offered his services. After interviewing him, Bagley was convinced that Nosenko was precisely who he claimed to be. Promising to deliver secrets, Nosenko returned to Moscow and Bagley to Washington, D.C., where James Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence, suggested that he read the file of Anatoly Golitsyn, another KGB agent who had defected in 1961. To Bagley’s amazement, Golitsyn had recounted incidents and operations identical to Nosenko’s. He concluded that Nosenko was a bogus agent sent to impugn Golitsyn but also that this indicated the presence of a highly placed mole inside the CIA. The plot thickened when Nosenko defected. Flown to the U.S., he responded to Bagley’s questioning with a mixture of boasting, self-promotion, contradictions, and lies, but he insisted that his defection was genuine. Nosenko was locked alone in a small, dark room for more than three years, taken out only for interrogation. Still maintaining his innocence, he received his freedom, an apology, compensation, and permission to remain in the U.S. Unconvinced and certain he was the victim of self-serving CIA politics, Bagley retired only to be galvanized years later by the apparent death of a CIA official, unconvincingly described as a suicide. Although he was barred from CIA archives, he launched an exhaustive search and ultimately concluded that the purported victim, John Paisley, was the mole. Blum admits that nearly everyone involved, Bagley included, was dead when he began his research. While many passages are pure speculation, tolerant readers will enjoy a largely entertaining spy story full of cutthroat CIA infighting and the occasional cut throat.
Novelistic, fast-paced history.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-063-05421-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.
A popular novelist turns his hand to historical writing, focusing on what shipwrecks can tell us.
There’s something inherently romantic about shipwrecks: the mystery, the drama of disaster, the prospect of lost treasure. Gibbins, who’s found acclaim as an author of historical fiction, has long been fascinated with them, and his expertise in both archaeology and diving provides a tone of solid authority to his latest book. The author has personally dived on more than half the wrecks discussed in the book; for the other cases, he draws on historical records and accounts. “Wrecks offer special access to history at all…levels,” he writes. “Unlike many archaeological sites, a wreck represents a single event in which most of the objects were in use at that time and can often be closely dated. What might seem hazy in other evidence can be sharply defined, pointing the way to fresh insights.” Gibbins covers a wide variety of cases, including wrecks dating from classical times; a ship torpedoed during World War II; a Viking longship; a ship of Arab origin that foundered in Indonesian waters in the ninth century; the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of Henry VIII; and an Arctic exploring vessel, the Terror (for more on that ship, read Paul Watson’s Ice Ghost). Underwater excavation often produces valuable artifacts, but Gibbins is equally interested in the material that reveals the society of the time. He does an excellent job of placing each wreck within a broader context, as well as examining the human elements of the story. The result is a book that will appeal to readers with an interest in maritime history and who would enjoy a different, and enlightening, perspective.
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250325372
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
