A lively and insightful exploration of an overlooked international alliance.
An eye-opening account of America’s relations with Poland and its intelligence service.
In 1994, journalist Pomfret was the Washington Postbureau chief for Eastern Europe, located in Warsaw, when he heard a rumor that Polish spies had rescued six Americans from Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1990. Tracking down the story was no easy matter, but his efforts have produced an entertaining political history of Poland since World War II, almost entirely focused on its intelligence service, which, under Soviet domination, rivaled the KGB in its ability to steal U.S. secrets. Unlike other Eastern European satellites that purged their security agencies after achieving independence in 1989, Poland’s new democratic leadership decided that it was a bad idea to create an army of well-trained, unemployed opponents. Consequently, its new security service retained thousands of ex-communists who switched sides and served loyally. As Pomfret notes, CIA leaders were delighted. As one explained, “How could you not benefit from dealing with the Poles who lived in the most dangerous piece of real estate in Europe?...They’d had forty-five years of liaison with the KGB…and they knew tons more about the Soviets.” The author ably demonstrates how, almost immediately, this policy produced benefits that have lasted into the present. Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait trapped many Americans, among them those six officers privy to secret information. The CIA asked for Poland’s help, and Poland’s security service assigned agents to the task. Pomfret delivers a nail-biting account of the escape that Polish agents engineered, featuring a hair-rising drive across Iraq to the border and safety. Long a faithful ally, Poland participated, despite misgivings, in the American debacles in Afghanistan and the second Iraq War, hosting a “black site” where investigators could question terrorist prisoners free of American legal protection. In return, the U.S. provided generous foreign aid, subsidized its intelligence service, and (sadly) kept quiet as, in recent decades, Poland has elected right-wing, authoritarian governments.
A lively and insightful exploration of an overlooked international alliance.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-29605-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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