3 results for "American History"

True believer: Stalin's last American spy

Marton, Kati
“Relevant...fascinating...vividly reconstructed.” — The New York Times Book Review “Riveting reading...a mesmerizing look at Cold War espionage.” — USA TODAY This astonishing real-life spy thriller, filled with danger, misplaced loyalties, betrayal, treachery, and pure evil, with a plot twist worthy of John le Carré, is relevant today as a tale of fanaticism and the lengths it takes us to. True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin’s sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades. How does an Ivy League-educated, US State Department employee, deeply rooted in American culture and history, become a hardcore Stalinist? The 1930s, when Noel Field joined the secret underground of the International Communist Movement, were a time of national collapse: ten million Americans unemployed, rampant racism, retreat from the world just as fascism was gaining ground, and Washington—pre FDR—parched of fresh ideas. Communism promised the righting of social and political wrongs and many in Field’s generation were seduced by its siren song. Few, however, went as far as Noel Field in betraying their own country. With a reporter’s eye for detail, and a historian’s grasp of the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, Kati Marton captures Field’s riveting quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong. True Believer is supported by unprecedented access to Field family correspondence, Soviet Secret Police records, and reporting on key players from Alger Hiss, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and World War II spy master, “Wild Bill” Donovan—to the most sinister of all: Josef Stalin. A story of another time, this is a tale relevant for all times.
Simon & Schuster 2016-09-06 289 pages

Missing man: the American spy who vanished in Iran

Meier, Barry
A real-life thriller about a CIA contractor who vanished in Iran and the international manhunt to find him In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States. Barry Meier, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times , draws on years of interviews and never-before-disclosed CIA files to weave together a riveting narrative of the ex-agent’s journey to Iran and the hunt to rescue him. The result is an extraordinary tale about the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace. Its colorful cast includes CIA operatives, Russian oligarchs, arms dealers, White House officials, gangsters, private eyes, FBI agents, journalists, and a fugitive American terrorist and assassin. Missing Man is a fast-paced story that moves through exotic locales and is set against the backdrop of the twilight war between the United States and Iran, one in which hostages are used as political pawns. Filled with stunning revelations, it chronicles a family’s ongoing search for answers and one man’s desperate struggle to keep his hand in the game.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2018-02-20 279 pages

Total espionage: Germany's information and disinformation apparatus, 1932-41

Riess, Curt
Total Espionage was first published shortly before Pearl Harbor and is fresh in its style, retaining immediacy unpolluted by the knowledge of subsequent events. It tells how the whole apparatus of the Nazi state was geared towards war by its systematic gathering of information and dissemination of disinformation. The author, a Berlin journalist, went into exile in 1933 and eventually settled in Manhattan in where he wrote for the 'Saturday Evening Post'. He maintained a network of contacts throughout Europe and from inside the regime to garner his facts. The Nazis made use of many people and organizations: officers' associations who were in touch with many who left to help organize the armies of South American countries, and in the USA there were the Friends of the New Germany. German consulates sprang up and aircraft would make unusual detours to observe interesting parts of foreign countries. News agencies and various associations dedicated to maintaining contacts with particular countries were encouraged to supply information. Film studios would send large crews abroad to shoot documentaries as well as perform acts of espionage. Foreign nationals were bribed or blackmailed; and pro-fascist groups in foreign countries were supported via the Auslandsorganization. All Germans living abroad were encouraged to report their observations to the authorities, particular attention was being focused on engineers, technicians, scientists and people in other professions who were particularly likely to obtain valuable information; however, other Germans abroad were also used, even cabaret singers, waiters, language teachers, as well as Germans traveling abroad as tourists. Germans living abroad were exempt from mobilization because of their value as spies. Foreigners were given opportunity to study in Germany, and connections with them were kept in the hope that they would one day provide useful information. All of this was Goebbels' 'Total Espionage'.
Fonthill 2016 288 pages