The suspenseful, eye-opening memoir of a Soviet spy who came in from the cold. Writing in the third person, Sheymov offers a riveting account of his upwardly mobile career with the KGB and the factors that led him to defect to the West in 1980. In 1969, after graduating with an engineering degreee from Moscow's prestigious Technical University, the author joined a Defense Ministry institute that was researching military uses of space. Recruited by the state's intelligence service in 1971, at age 25, Sheymov eventually became the Eighth Chief Directorate's principal troubleshooter. In this sensitive capacity, he traveled far afield, ensuring the security of enciphered KGB communications throughout the world: During one sojourn, for example, he was able to figure out how the technologically backward Chinese had managed to eavesdrop on the USSR's Beijing embassy. Along the way, the author also learned about his agency's penetration of the Russian Orthodox Church, its role in the plot to assassinate Pope John-Paul II, and its involvement in other unsavory projects. But the higher Sheymov climbed, the more disillusioned he became with Communism and the Kremlin elite's corruption. Resolved to inflict as much damage as he could on the system, the author, while on a Warsaw assignment, evaded his minder and made contact with the CIA. The latter third of the narrative provides a detailed briefing on how Sheymov's knowledge of KGB tradecraft, as well as the professionalism of US operatives, allowed him to slip across two closely guarded borders into Austria with his wife and young daughter. The exfiltration was so skillfully executed that the author's erstwhile masters long believed that he and his family were dead. While the story ends abruptly with Sheymov's escorted arrival in N.Y.C., it seems likely that the information he subsequently furnished American officials hastened the cold war's end. A top-level insider's dramatic, stranger-than-fiction disclosures in the great game of espionage. (Maps and photographs- -not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-55750-764-3
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 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.
