THE GREATEST PLOT IN HISTORY

History is a jigsaw puzzle,"" remarks Mr. de Toledano. ""... The puzzle is never completed. Yet each piece, as it is fitted into place, generates its own fascination."" Millions of words have already been written about Russia's atomic espionage but perhaps this is the first attempt to combine all the salient facts into a composite picture. They seem to be all here, those people who made blanket-sized headlines a decade or more ago: Arthur Adams; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Allan Nunn May; Igor Gouzenko; Harry Gold; Klaus Fuchs; ""Peking Joan"" Chase Hinton; Bruno Pontecorvo; Burgess and MacLean; Greenglass and the Rosenbergs; spies, dupes, traitors, patriots, what have you, all involved in darker, deeper doings than even Ian Fleming could conjure up. But while the author quite realistically points out all the weaknesses and conflicts in American nuclear policy, he submits a picture of the Soviet Union which denies any and all diversity of aim and motivation. Russia is totalitarian, agreed; but surely no nation composed of human beings can be quite so monolithic, so dedicated to one nefarious purpose, as we are here asked to accept. Either life itself has come under the influence of pulp fiction, or one must suggest that Mr. de Toledano has. He can, however, make his case seem as chillingly real as many of the individual characters involved.