Why am I passionate about this?

For more than fifty years I have been fascinated by the relationship between the Communist Party of the United States and the Soviet Union. When Russian archives were opened to Western scholars after the collapse of the USSR, I was the first American to work in a previously closed archive where I discovered evidence that American communists had spied for the Soviets. Our understanding of twentieth-century history has been transformed by the revelations about the extent to which Soviet spies had infiltrated American institutions. Excavating long-buried secrets is a historian's dream!


I wrote

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

By John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Alexander Vassiliev

Book cover of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

What is my book about?

Based on material from the KGB archives, the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America from the 1930s to…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Whittaker Chambers: A Biography

Harvey Klehr Why did I love this book?

The Alger Hiss case riveted America in the late 1940s and early 1950s. His trial and conviction convince many Americans that Communist espionage had been a serious problem and the case made Richard Nixon a national figure. His chief accuser, Whittaker Chambers, was a fascinating, tormented, talented man and writer. Tanenhaus’s biography portrays him with all his virtues, warts, and contradictions.

By Sam Tanenhaus,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Whittaker Chambers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

[Audiobook CD Library Edition in vinyl case.]

[Read by Edward Lewis]

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist

Whittaker Chambers is the first biography of this complex and enigmatic figure. Drawing on dozens of interviews and on materials from forty archives in the United States and abroad -- including still-classified KGB dossiers -- Tanenhaus traces the remarkable journey that led Chambers from a sleepy Long Island village to center stage in America's greatest political trial and then, in his last years, to a unique role as the godfather of post-war conservatism.

This…


Book cover of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Harvey Klehr Why did I love this book?

No British spy did more damage to the West than Kim Philby, a high-ranking MI6 official who spied for the USSR from the 1930s until his defection in 1963.  Macintyre captures his many betrayals- of his family, friends, and country, demonstrates how he was able to deceive so many people for so many years, and evaluates the damage he did and the lives he ruined.

By Ben Macintyre,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked A Spy Among Friends as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War.

Philby's two closest friends in the intelligence world, Nicholas Elliott of MI6 and James Jesus Angleton, the CIA intelligence chief, thought they knew Philby better than anyone, and then discovered they had not known him at all. This is a story of intimate duplicity; of loyalty, trust and treachery, class and conscience; of an ideological battle waged by men with cut-glass accents and…


Book cover of The Rosenberg File

Harvey Klehr Why did I love this book?

For decades the myth that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for atomic espionage in 1953 and the only American civilians given the death penalty for espionage, were innocent was a staple on the American left. Radosh and Milton, employing declassified government documents and digging up new evidence, conclusively demonstrated their guilt.

By Ronald Radosh, Joyce Milton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Rosenberg File as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This highly acclaimed book-hailed as the definitive account of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case-now includes a new introduction that discusses the most recent evidence. It provides information from the Khrushchev and Molotov memoirs, the Venona papers, and material contained in a Discovery Channel documentary that was first aired in March 1997.


Book cover of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley

Harvey Klehr Why did I love this book?

In addition to facilitating atomic espionage, Julius Rosenberg supervised several engineers who stole vital technical secrets dealing with radar, sonar, and aviation.  Usdin tells the fascinating story of two of them, Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, who defected to the Soviet Union after the Rosenbergs were arrested and helped build the Soviet Silicon Valley.

By Steven T. Usdin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Engineering Communism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Engineering Communism is the fascinating story of Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, dedicated Communists and members of the Rosenberg spy ring, who stole information from the United States during World War II that proved crucial to building the first advanced weapons systems in the USSR. On the brink of arrest, they escaped with KGB's help and eluded American intelligence for decades.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Barr and new archival evidence, Steve Usdin explains why Barr and Sarant became spies, how they obtained military secrets, and how FBI blunders led to their escape. He chronicles their pioneering role in the…


Book cover of Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy

Harvey Klehr Why did I love this book?

The story of the youngest physicist at Los Alamos, Ted Hall, who volunteered to spy for the KGB and provided vital atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Although Hall’s treachery was discovered by American counter-intelligence, he was never prosecuted to avoid alerting the Soviets that the United States had decrypted their top-secret WWII cables. Albright and Kunstel tell the story of an idealistic, naïve and arrogant spy.

By Joseph Albright, Marcia Kunstel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bombshell as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ted Hall was a physics prodigy so gifted that he was asked to join the Manhattan Project when he was only eighteen years old.  There, in wartime Los Alamos, working under Robert Oppenheimer and Bruno Rossi, Hall helped build the atomic bomb.  To his friends and coworkers he was a brilliant young rebel with a boundless future in atomic science.  To his Soviet spymasters, he was something else: "Mlad," their mole within Los Alamos, a most hidden and valuable asset and the men who first slipped them the secrets to the making of the atomic bomb.

In a book that…


Explore my book 😀

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

By John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Alexander Vassiliev

Book cover of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

What is my book about?

Based on material from the KGB archives, the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America from the 1930s to the 1960s, demonstrating that virtually all those accused of spying during the Cold War, including the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and Lauchlin Currie were guilty - but exonerating Robert Oppenheimer. More than 500 Americans were involved with the KGB and GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence), and many of them are named for the first time in this book.

Book cover of Whittaker Chambers: A Biography
Book cover of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
Book cover of The Rosenberg File

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Defection in Prague

By Ray C Doyle,

Book cover of Defection in Prague

Ray C Doyle Author Of Lara's Secret

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing for many years, and my main preference is political thrillers with criminal overtones. I first became interested in politics when I worked at several political conferences in the 60’s and 70’s. I have been involved in several criminal cases, including my own, and within my family, I have a nephew in the police force. For many years I have had the opportunity to mix with the upper tiers of society as well as the criminal classes and this has given me great insight into creating my characters and plots.

Ray's book list on mysteries with complicated plots and risky characters

What is my book about?

Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.

Pete meets a Czechian agent who wants asylum. She has a murdered EU Commissioner’s diary containing clues to the civil unrest planned by the club, encrypted in algebraic chess notations. West seeks answers and links up with retired MI6 officer Tosh. While escaping would-be captors, they decode enough chess moves to reveal the anarchy of the…

Defection in Prague

By Ray C Doyle,

What is this book about?

Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.

Pete meets a Czechian agent who wants asylum. She has a murdered EU Commissioner’s diary containing clues to the civil unrest planned by the club, encrypted in algebraic chess notations. West seeks answers and links up with retired MI6 officer Tosh. While escaping would-be captors, they decode enough chess moves to reveal the anarchy of the…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Soviet Union, espionage, and spies?

The Soviet Union 378 books
Espionage 636 books
Spies 664 books