I have been writing about Russia for the past 20 years for all the UK national newspapers, The Spectator and contributed to several TV documentaries. I am fascinated by Russia which is a unique country and has been a major influence on the world for the past 100 years. Based on new documents, my book Londongrad - From Russia with Cash revealed how Russian Oligarchs made their wealth, moved it out of Russia,hid their fortunes and then parked and spent it in London. My new book - Agents of Influence - provides an insight into how the KGB influenced the West based on new archives.
Based on an unprecedented treasure trove of documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union by former intelligence officer Vasily Mitrokhin, this book demonstrated the KGB operations used in an attempt to destabilise the West during the Cold War - disinformation, forgery of documents, honey trapping, smears, surveillance and recruiting agents of influence and politicians in the UK, NATO countries and the USA.
I am recommending The Mitrokhin Archive because it is based on primary documents. So many books about espionage are based on memories and speculation, while the Mitrokhin Archive's value is that its assertions and revelations are based on actual KGB documents.
And so this book was indispensable for my research for my book.
'One of the biggest intelligence coups in recent years' The Times
For years KGB operative Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life hiding top-secret material from Russian secret service archives beneath his family dacha. When he was exfiltrated to the West he took with him what the FBI called 'the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source'. This extraordinary bestselling book is the result.
'Co-authored in a brilliant partnership by Christopher Andrew and the renegade Soviet archivist himself ... This is a truly global expose of major KGB penetrations throughout the Western world' The Times
I covered the FBI and CIA for years, first as a print reporter in Washington and then as the head of the NBC News investigative unit. So I have covered my fair share of spy scandals, and with my colleague Pete Williams helped NBC break the story of Robert Hanssen’s arrest. I was immediately drawn to the Ana Montes Cuba spy story when it broke and then learned that Montes had bought her condo from my close friend and college roommate, John. That meant I had spent hours inside Ana’s DC apartment, and that odd connection rooted me in her story in a deeper way.
Jack Devine is the former acting director of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, and ran covert ops that drove the Russians out of Afghanistan. In this book, he shows how the Russians have undermined our democracy for decades and how they’ve now weaponized cyberspace, too. It’s an alarming wake-up call from a true American spymaster.
I have gotten to know Jack over the years, and have gotten a first-hand glimpseat how clever he must have been running secret operations in some of the world’s scariest neighborhoods. Not a guy to ever underestimate; his books are as fascinating as Jack himself.
In Spymaster's Prism: The Fight Against Russian Aggression legendary former spymaster Jack Devine aims to ignite public discourse on our country's intelligence and counterintelligence posture against Russia, among other adversaries. Spymasters are not spies - their mission is to run and handle spies and spy networks. They exist in virtually all sophisticated intelligence services around the world, including the more high-profile services like the CIA, SVR, SIS, MSS, VAJA and Mossad. Without exception, these spymasters are highly trained and broadly experienced top-level government officials who are at the heart of the intelligence business. They make the life and death decisions.…
I am a speaker, author, and academic. Originally from Rome, I now live in the Netherlands, where I lecture and do research on international and diplomatic history. My book examines the ethical and pragmatic dilemmas that characterized the making of the German-Israeli relationship after the Holocaust at the outset of the global Cold War. I value good reads and excellent conversations, and I held visiting fellowships in, among others, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Oxford. My work won a Dutch National Research Council grant, a major research grant from the Alfred Landecker Foundation, and the LNVH award for ‘Distinguished Women Scientists.’ These days, I divide my time between Rome, Berlin, and Utrecht.
When one thinks of diplomats and what they do, one often conjures up scenes of fancy cocktail parties and elegant dinners–and understandably so. It is exactly for this reason that I will never forget how Jane Marriott recalled what it felt like, during her time as British Ambassador to Yemen, to sit inside an embassy that was under attack.
She shared this and other stories during a workshop held at the British Academy in London, where both academics and practitioners were involved. This is a recommended volume for all those interested in how embassies work in times of crisis.
Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory 'immune' from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis.
Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of…
I'm a lawyer (Harvard Law School) who loves to write. My books reflect my eclectic interests. I've written nonfiction books about John Kennedy’s presidency, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, CBS Founder William S. Paley, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Pearl Harbor. Each of my nonfiction books tries to focus on something with respect to a particular person or event that had not been addressed in detail in any other book. I've also written a thriller (Deadly Risks) which revolves around JFK’s assassination and can be likened to John Grisham’s book, The Pelican Brief.
Although not technically about the Pearl Harbor attack, Those Angry Days is an excellent companion to understand the mood in America in those months before the attack. While Grew was focused on avoiding an almost inevitable conflict between Japan and the United States, Olson shows that Americans in general and President Roosevelt in particular were far more focused on whether and how to engage in the ongoing conflict in Europe.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
From the acclaimed author of Citizens of London comes the definitive account of the debate over American intervention in World War II—a bitter, sometimes violent clash of personalities and ideas that divided the nation and ultimately determined the fate of the free world.
At the center of this controversy stood the two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the interventionist cause, and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as unofficial leader and spokesman…
Award-winning journalist and historian Andrew Nagorski was born in Scotland to Polish parents, moved to the United States as an infant, and has rarely stopped moving since. During a long career at Newsweek, he served as the magazine's bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin. In 1982, he gained international notoriety when the Kremlin, angered by his enterprising reporting, expelled him from the Soviet Union. Nagorski is the author of seven books, including The Nazi Huntersand Hitlerland.
Ivan Maisky served as the Soviet Union’s ambassador in London from 1932 to 1943. In his extensive diaries, he chronicled his frequent interactions with Churchill and other British officials. He predicted that 1941 would be “the decisive year of the war,” which proved accurate. But, like his boss Joseph Stalin, he refused to believe at first that Hitler would turn against the Soviet Union, with whom Germany had signed a non-aggression pact. His diary shows how quickly the Kremlin acted as if it had always opposed Hitler’s plans—and made increasingly strident demands for Western aid. The makings of the future Cold War are already evident in this account.
Highlights of the extraordinary wartime diaries of Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London
The terror and purges of Stalin's Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. This selection from Maisky's diary, never before published in English, grippingly documents Britain's drift to war during the 1930s, appeasement in the Munich era, negotiations leading to the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Churchill's rise to power, the German invasion of Russia, and the…
Robert Hutton is the author of Agent Jack, the previously untold tale of the surprisingly large number of British people who tried to help Hitler win World War 2. He spent a decade and a half following British prime ministers around the world for Bloomberg and now writes parliamentary sketches for The Critic while researching intelligence history.
I have a vivid memory of opening the file on Britain’s efforts to bring America into the war, declassified only recently, and being astonished at the things that had gone on. Hemming’s book tells this amazing story and raises the ethical question of whether Britain’s end – defeating Hitler – was justified by its means – spreading fake news in the US and even interfering in its politics.
"A revelatory and wholly fascinating work of history. Superbly researched and written with gripping fluency, this lost secret of World War II espionage finally has its expert chronicler." - WILLIAM BOYD
'Gripping and intoxicating, it unfolds like the best screenplay.' NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE
The gripping story of a propaganda campaign like no other: the covert British operation to manipulate American public opinion and bring the US into the Second World War.
When William Stephenson - "our man in New York" - arrived in the United States towards the end of June 1940 with instructions from the head of MI6 to 'organise'…
Teresa Fava Thomas, Ph.D. is a professor of history at Fitchburg State University and author of American Arabists in theCold War Middle East, 1946-75: From Orientalism to Professionalismfor Anthem Press. I became interested in people who became area experts for the US State Department and how their study of hard languages like Arabic shaped their interactions with people in the region.
An experienced diplomat offers a good overview of how the past diplomatic history of the US since 1945 informs the present. Explains the major theoretical perspectives on modern diplomacy and fundamentals of practice. An informative read which presents a broad on how American diplomacy can be better shaped to function more effectively in the future.
Making Diplomacy Work: Intelligent Innovation for the Modern World is a critical and comprehensive survey of how diplomacy works. While most discussions of diplomatic reform stop short of proposing concrete ideas to make diplomacy work better, this text suggests doable initiatives that could make diplomacy more versatile, more attuned to modern realities, and more capable of confronting the shared problems that no state can solve on its own. It takes a fresh look at the practice of diplomacy, sets its achievements and failures in a contemporary context, and analyzes the major factors that have changed the way it is conducted.…
I am a historian of diplomacy, war, and empire. A founding editor ofThe International History Review, I have written books on ‘Imperial Diplomacy’, on the origins of the First World War, and on the July Crisis.I have edited: the 5-volume Encyclopedia of War andthe 4-volumeEncyclopedia of Diplomacy; the journals of A.L. Kennedy for the Royal Historical Society; numerous collections of essays, and the multi-volume Seminar Studies in History series. I am currently working on a two-volume study of Political Intelligence in Great Britain, 1900-1950, which is a group biography of the men who made up the Department of Political Intelligence in Britain, 1917-1919
One of the most enduring explanations for the outbreak of war in 1914 is that of ‘imperialism’. The argument that competition for resources beyond the ‘natural’ frontiers of European states created bitter rivalries among the Great Powers had been made many times before 1914, whenever a crisis in Africa, Asia, or the Middle East threatened to turn into a shooting war. But disentangling the complex motives, strategies, and tactics that intersected Great Power politics is a daunting task.
One of the finest case studies of the imperial mentalité can be found in Bobroff’s fascinating book. Not only does he break new ground in this study, but he has mined the Russian archives to great effect, moving the subject along from grand, unproven assertions concerning Russian policies to a detailed and persuasive understanding of both their ambitions and their fears.
Until now, it has been accepted that the Turkish Straits - the Russian fleet's gateway to the Mediterranean - were a key factor in shaping Russian policy in the years leading to World War I. Control of the Straits had always been accepted as the major priority of Imperial Russia's foreign policy. In this powerfully argued revisionist history, Ronald Bobroff exposes the true Russian concern before the outbreak of war: the containment of German aggression. Based on extensive new research, Bobroff provides fascinating new insights into Russia's state development before the revolution, examining the policies and personal correspondence of its…
To me, political and moral questions have always seemed intertwined. My career as a political theorist is dedicated to using philosophical argument to untangle the moral questions surrounding real-world politics. I am especially interested in ethics and international affairs, including the ethics of intervention, what a just world order would look like, and how our understandings of familiar ideals—like justice, democracy, and equality—would change if we thought they were not only meant to be pursued within each nation-state, but also globally, by humanity as a whole. As faculty in Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University, I explore these issues with colleagues and students alike.
This book questions orthodoxies that need questioning. Shue argues that rights to the goods one needs to survive (like food, potable water, and clean air) are just as morally urgent and just as important to protect as rights to bodily security.
He offers a bold defense of the moral imperative to ensure everyone in the world has their most important rights, including rights to subsistence goods, protected. This, in turn, has significant implications for US foreign policy. It shows the status quo—in which states like the US retain massive amounts of wealth, safeguarding their own citizens’ pursuit of even their most trivial preferences while people elsewhere in the world starve—to be morally indefensible.
An expanded and updated edition of a classic work on human rights and global justice
Since its original publication, Basic Rights has proven increasingly influential to those working in political philosophy, human rights, global justice, and the ethics of international relations and foreign policy, particularly in debates regarding foreign policy's role in alleviating global poverty. Henry Shue asks: Which human rights ought to be the first honored and the last sacrificed? Shue argues that subsistence rights, along with security rights and liberty rights, serve as the ground of all other human rights. This classic work, now available in a thoroughly…
Current tensions with China show few in the United States are aware of
the prewar period when the United States was closely involved in freeing China
from Japanese oppression. My ancestor, Maj. Gen. Earnest Easterbrook, was in
China during this period as adjutant to Vinegar Joe Stillwell, the topic of
Tuchman’s book.
Though Americans have forgotten this period, China has not. Earnest
Easterbrook’s descendants, John Easterbrook and Nancy Millward, recently were in
China being feted by Xi Jinping at a remembrance ceremony for American
sacrifices made to assist China during the war.
It made me think there is a
path to better Washington-Beijing relations if only we are willing to walk it.
'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell, the general who was the American commander in the China-Burma-India theatre of World War II, had a deep love of China. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman, combines a fascinating narrative of America's relationship with China from the fall of the Manchu Dynasty through to the rise of Mao Tse-Tung with an intimate biography of Vinegar Joe. Stilwell loved China deeply, spoke its languages and understood its people as few Westerners have. Tuchman traces his life from his first visit during the 1911 Revolution through the Second World War to his confrontation with…
