Ian Fleming couldn’t have dreamt up anything better.
The facts behind the fantastic lives of spies born from Cold War friction.
A $20 million wire-tapping device, microfilm hidden in a pumpkin, crawling through sewers—it reads like fiction, but this isn’t James Bond. It’s the truth about some of the key players in obtaining enemy information (be that proclaimed enemy the USSR or USA). Spanning the period from 1945 to 1985 (dubbed “Year of the Spy”), the book recounts the journeys, goals, and outcomes of several spies—loyal, defected, and double agent—in tandem with the wars and threats to ways of life that produced them. Supported by transcripts of testimony, quotations, and stories that could easily be material for a summer blockbuster, Favreau (Crash, 2018, etc.) ably dissects their individual impetuses for entree into spydom, reasons for deceit, and cause for allegiance. The spies’ personal depths of dedication to creating false identities and the stress of shouldering secrets—or selling them—will inspire even reluctant historians to dig deeper and deeper. A breadth of supporting backmatter, including timelines, key KGB and CIA factoids, and glossaries for both the Cold War and espionage in general, is included, as is a list of suggested further reading for those whose interest has been exceptionally piqued.
Ian Fleming couldn’t have dreamt up anything better. (historical notes, timeline, glossary, notes, primary sources, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-54592-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future.
An adaptation for teens of the adult title A Queer History of the United States (2011).
Divided into thematic sections, the text filters LGBTQIA+ history through key figures in each era from the 1500s to the present. Alongside watershed moments like the 1969 Stonewall uprising and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the text brings to light less well-known people, places, and events: the 1625 free love colony of Merrymount, transgender Civil War hero Albert D.J. Cashier, and the 1951 founding of the Mattachine Society, to name a few. Throughout, the author and adapter take care to use accurate pronouns and avoid imposing contemporary terminology onto historical figures. In some cases, they quote primary sources to speculate about same-sex relationships while also reminding readers of past cultural differences in expressing strong affection between friends. Black-and-white illustrations or photos augment each chapter. Though it lacks the teen appeal and personable, conversational style of Sarah Prager’s Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017), this textbook-level survey contains a surprising amount of depth. However, the mention of transgender movements and activism—in particular, contemporary issues—runs on the slim side. Whereas chapters are devoted to over 30 ethnically diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer figures, some trans pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen and Holly Woodlawn are reduced to short sidebars.
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future. (glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5612-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a...
A lovely, lively historical survey that takes in Neanderthals, Hohenzollerns and just about everything in between.
In 1935, Viennese publisher Walter Neurath approached Gombrich, who would go on to write the canonical, bestselling Story of Art, to translate a history textbook for young readers. Gombrich volunteered that he could do better than the authors, and Neurath accepted the challenge, provided that a completed manuscript was on his desk in six weeks. This book, available in English for the first time, is the happy result. Gombrich is an engaging narrator whose explanations are charming if sometimes vague. (Take the kid-friendly definition of truffles: “Truffles,” he says, “are a very rare and special sort of mushroom.” End of lesson.) Among the subjects covered are Julius Caesar (who, Gombrich exults, was able to dictate two letters simultaneously without getting confused), Charlemagne, the American Civil War, Karl Marx, the Paris Commune and Kaiser Wilhelm. As he does, he offers mostly gentle but pointed moralizing about the past, observing, for instance, that the Spanish conquest of Mexico required courage and cunning but was “so appalling, and so shaming to us Europeans that I would rather not say anything more about it,” and urging his young readers to consider that perhaps not all factory owners were as vile as Marx portrayed them to be, even though the good owners “against their conscience and their natural instincts, often found themselves treating their workers in the same way”—which is to say, badly.
Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a fine conception and summarizing of the world’s checkered past for young and old.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-300-10883-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
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