Bridge of Spies
A True Story of the Cold War
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The “riveting, meticulously researched, and beautifully written” (Ben Macintyre, author of The Spy and the Traitor) true story chronicles the first and most legendary prisoner exchange of the Cold War, between East and West at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie
“A marvelous saga of dangerous missions, helter-skelter innovation, and clandestine activity.”—The Wall Street Journal
Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange of the nuclear age? Bridge of Spies vividly traces their paths to that electrifying moment on February 10, 1962, when their fates helped to define the conflicts and lethal undercurrents of the most dangerous years of the cold war.
Bridge of Spies is the true story of three extraordinary characters—William Fisher, alias Rudolf Abel, a British-born KGB agent arrested by the FBI in New York City and jailed as a Soviet superspy for trying to steal America’s most precious nuclear secrets; Gary Powers, the American U-2 pilot who was captured when his plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over central Russia; and Frederic Pryor, a young American graduate student in Berlin mistakenly identified as a spy, arrested, and held without charge by the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police.
Giles Whittell masterfully weaves the three strands of this story together and reconstructs the brinkmanship and covert mind games that brought the United States and Soviet Union so close to a hot war in the early 1960s. The exchange that day at two of the most sensitive points along the Iron Curtain represented the first step back from where the superpowers had stood since the building of the Berlin Wall the previous summer—on the brink of World War III.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The incredible true story behind Tom Hanks’ Oscar®-nominated film is as engrossing as any thriller. Bridge of Spies documents a pivotal prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia during the most perilous years of the Cold War. Author Giles Whittell artfully weaves together the stories of three prisoners: the lovable KGB super-spy caught stealing America’s nuclear secrets, the promising U-2 pilot gunned down over Russia, and the student falsely identified as a secret agent by Germany’s infamous Stasi. We especially enjoyed Whittell’s fascinating details, such as how spies communicated via hollowed-out coins and cornflake-sized dots of microfilm.
Customer Reviews
Bridge of Spies
Well-written and well-researched! A vivid account of the incident that prolonged the Cold War and threatened to send humanity to the nuclear abyss. A must read!
Energetic spy read
Well written account about events and personal experiences of the Cold War Era. Educators would be well served by using this account to explain current foreign policy actions and blunders.
Too many editorials
The author assumes he knows what the principal players were thinking when in fact he did not know the players, had never spoken to them but pretends to know what was going on during this incredible international game of chess.