MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewMacintyre has terrific material to work with, and in general he keeps a firm grip on it. But in recounting every aspect of espionage tradecraft, in addition to each problem that arises in the courtship of Gordievsky by British intelligence and the histories of all of the many MI6 agents who ran him, not to mention the ever-so-complicated details of Gordievsky’s \'exfiltration\' from the Soviet Union, Macintyre’s story sometimes bogs down. On the other hand, God is in the details, and it’s hard to imagine that there could ever be too many of those when the full account of our current engagement with Russian espionage and the Americans who have enabled it is finally written.
Ben Macintyre
MixedNew York Times Book Review\"The Spy and the Traitor is the latest of Ben Macintyre’s nonfiction narratives about spies of the last century, operating in wars hot and cold. The spy of Macintyre’s title is Gordievsky, the traitor is the American C.I.A. agent Aldrich Ames, although, in fact, both men were spies for, and traitors to, the country they served ... Macintyre has terrific material to work with, and in general he keeps a firm grip on it. But in recounting every aspect of espionage tradecraft, in addition to each problem that arises in the courtship of Gordievsky by British intelligence and the histories of all of the many MI6 agents who ran him, not to mention the ever-so-complicated details of Gordievsky’s “exfiltration” from the Soviet Union, Macintyre’s story sometimes bogs down. On the other hand, God is in the details, and it’s hard to imagine that there could ever be too many of those when the full account of our current engagement with Russian espionage and the Americans who have enabled it is finally written.\
Erik Larson
RaveThe New York Times Sunday Book ReviewHad Dodd gone to Berlin by himself, his reports of events, his diary entries, his quarrels with the State Department, his conversations with Roosevelt would be source material for specialists. But the general reader is in luck on two counts: First, Dodd took his family to Berlin, including his young, beautiful and sexually adventurous daughter, Martha; second, the book that recounts this story, In the Garden of Beasts, is by Erik Larson … The story of prewar Germany, of the Jews, of book burnings, of the Reichstag trial, of the Night of the Long Knives, of the Nuremberg rally, of the unfolding disaster is old news. But Larson has connected the dots to make a fresh picture of these terrible events.
