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The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre

Start date: September 1, 2022

Finish date: November 30, 2022

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Jan 09, 2019 Shirley (stampartiste) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-book-club, nonfiction

Ben Macintyre did it again... wrote a book about a topic I knew nothing about yet wrote it so well that, about midway through it, I literally could not put the book down until I had finished it. I felt the same way about A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal and Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War. Ben Macintyre is just a master at writing exciting and unforgettable stories about real-l ...more

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Sep 29, 2022 Rosemary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Oleg Gordievsky was 30 years old and moving up the ranks of the Soviet secret intelligence agency, the KGB, when the Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quell a rising reform movement. With other factors, it pushed him into offering to spy for the British. The information he gave over the next 17 years had effects that rippled through every country involved in the Cold War.

This is a gripping story - I found it slow to start, with a lot of detail and many names to remember in the ...more

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Jul 26, 2022 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, lwv-suggest, rws-2022-summer

A fascinating true story of Cold War espionage. This is the story of a KGB double agent, Oleg Gordievsky. His information and his analysis of the Soviet leaders were important parts of the Cold War thaw and downfall of the USSR. Macintyre writes the story well including suspense and human errors.

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