Customer Reviews:
Tons of information that is still relevant!.......2002-08-01
Tower of Secrets is a great book. It is written by a former KGB officer who became disillusioned with communism and defected to the United States with his family. The author is at his best when discussing his area of specialty, which were electronic countermeasures. First published in 1993, it provides the first glimpse I have found in mass-market literature of the technology known as TEMPEST which is the ability to pick up and read transient electro-magnetic emissions from electronic devices. It sheds a lot of light on the subject of secure communications. One of the author's points of emphasis is that Humans are always the weakest link in any security system.
I enjoyed his revelations on the techniques and tactics of the Chinese Intelligence services. Their abilities appear to be underrated by the West. His pointers on surveillance and counter surveillance are outstanding and should be read by anyone concerned with these fields. My only criticisms are in the amount of detail he provided on how he became disillusioned with the communist party. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in intelligence matters.
Cold War Fun.......2002-04-18
This book was an interesting look at the KGB during the first part of the cold war. I think we all have a view of the KGB, which was formed during the years of the cold war, a large, well run organization that many times was one step ahead of the U.S. This author does not go against that view. The author is relating his experiences in the arm of the KGB that was responsible for information gathering, primarily against the U.S. and NATO. There are some interesting bits and you get a good look that this authors insight to "the game". This book details what actually happened in the KGB during this time with an inside account of the methods of the KGB and a run down of some of the missions they took part in.
The author does a good job in providing the reader with many of the interesting tradecraft bit about the KGB. Overall this is an interesting book that gives the espionage junky an another look into the KGB. The book is well written and does not drag or stumble. It keeps the readers interest through out. If you are an armchair expert on the topic then this is another of the titles you will undoubtedly already have or will need to pick up. If you are the general reader then this is a good broad description of the KGB that is interesting, but not the definitive one volume work.
Still Useful Insights.......2001-12-26
One might ask why twenty plus years on, the experiences of the author might have some significance other than to the historians of intelligence and the students of tradecraft and organization.
The primary reason I first bought this was that it dealt with Soviet SIGINT operations. Of course, one must keep in mind that in return for his exfiltration and a new start in the West, the suthor will not reveal anything that our side does not want him to even though the other side may have known what he revealed, we might not want that known by a third party in the intelligence business.
What is most relevent here and now is that the author was in the KGB, thoroughly understood its mindset, and broke with that mindset. It has been said that the KGB with its world wide tentacles was the only part of the USSR government that truly knew the situation both politically and economically.
Just because the KGB no longer exists in its old form, it formed the base of the Russian intelligence service of today. And most important of all, power has settled in the hands of Putin, who no matter how affable and westernized he may seem, spent all his working life in the KGB and its successor.
Consider that fact with the author' opinion that the Stalinists may come back. I think they will not but that authoritarianism very well might. After all the Russian never lived in a democracy before Communism and have no experience with it. And observe the semi anarchic business and social conditions in Russia. Belarus has already gone back to authoritanism.
Thus, this book remains useful for studying the other side, whether they prove to be friends or foes again.
Cold War Espionage.......2001-01-22
A moderately well written account of one man's increasing disaffection with Soviet society and his place in it as a middleranking Eighth Chief Directorate (KGB) officer in the Brezhnev era. Although regrettably ponderous in parts, as the writer obviously doctors dialogue to fill in readers unfamiliar with Russo-Soviet life, history and ways, the book reads easily and seems largely plausible.
The work shares the faults of most defector-penned accounts in seeing only the faults of the USSR and none of the advantages; nor the faults of the US and "Western" world. For example, Sheymov's child is being exposed to unpleasant Soviet propaganda at pre-school..well, fine, but there is propaganda equally strong and often more subtle in the "West": one only need read a copy of "Reader's Digest" to see that...and what about the indoctrination of children in the US with "holocaust" stories, such as the fictional accounts of Anna Frank and "Schindler's Ark", which are so often presented as fact?
In the end, one cannot say that this book has much more in it of a psychological nature to lift it above the accounts of other defectors' literary efforts (Suvorov, Levchenko et al), but is given 4 out of 5 marks for at least not being boring.
Fun and authoritative.......2000-04-08
This book is fun. It provides a look at the career of a KGB officer with a level of detail that makes one thing abundantly clear: the KGB and CIA are more alike than one might think, for the simply reason that they are both bureaucracies. Smoothly presented, enjoyable throughout.
Average customer rating:
- Fact is better than fiction
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Tower of Secrets/a Real Life Spy Thriller
Victor Sheymov
Manufacturer: Harpercollins (Mm)
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Binding: Paperback
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Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer
ASIN: 006100832X |
Customer Reviews:
Fact is better than fiction.......2001-10-15
If you like spy novels, true stories, or want an understanding of the former KGB, you are in luck because this is the book for you. This book is an easy read regardless of your knowledge of the former Soviet Union. It reads like a spy novel and provides some great stories and insight into the KGB.
Customer Reviews:
Very Overall Guide to Civil War Battlefields.......2003-12-03
I recently toured several battlefields in PA, VA, and MD. This book accompanied me wherever I went. It is a good, functional introduction to the battlefields. It really helped to review this guide nightly before reaching the battlefield next day, so I had a daily starting point and agenda. It also helped to fill in some historical perspective not offered by the US Park Service maps & brochures. I would recommend it to anyone touring a Civil War battlefield.
A terrific guide to the Civil War Battlefields.......1999-06-15
I found this book to be the best in this area. Many of the others I looked into were too compact, too poorly detailed, or far too many advertisements, difficult to read or just too hard to figure out. Mr Eicher does the job right. Each battlefield is detailed out with great maps, numbered markers and a condensed history. The maps are perfect for a colored marker pen to assist when driving along or for walking the trails. My first copy, after my vacation two years ago, disapeared, so I bought another copy for my trip next year. A great gift or keep handy for your next trip to Chickamaug, Five Forks, Franklin or when watching a theme related movie. Five and a half stars. Check it out!
Book Description
This new edition of a popular travel guide provides a detailed, accurate and modern approach to touring these national treasures.
Customer Reviews:
Don't Leave Home Without It !.......2006-04-17
I purchased this book before my 'mini-tour' of Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancerlorsville, and Appotmattox last fall - Awesome!!! SO many detailed directions to sites we would NEVER have know existed. If you plan on visiting any major Civil War Battlefield I highly recomend the book!
Book Description
Drawing upon a rich selection of documents, this text provides a detailed account of McCarthyism, a period which spanned from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s. It discusses the turbulent years during which Americans were routinely persecuted because they were suspected of being insufficiently patriotic or too sympathetic to the Soviet Union. The persecution took various forms, from imprisonment to the purging and blacklisting of untold thousands. Fried demonstrates how the end result was to consign the American radical left to irrelevancy, helping to ensure that already established policies, both foreign and domestic, would remain unchallenged. Fried provides informative introductions and headnotes for each section, as well as a useful bibliography. Through speeches, executives orders, congressional hearings, court decisions, official reports, letters, memoirs, and essays, this text offers the most sweeping and comprehensive look at McCarthyism, highlighting the cruelty, poignancy, and absurdity of this extraordinary period of time. Documenting both the persecuted and the persecutors, this is the definitive reader and core text for courses on McCarthyism, and an ideal supplement for courses on American history and political science.
Customer Reviews:
Fried Doesn't include Venona Intercepts.......2005-02-14
This is a valuable review of numerous documents from the era that is commonly referred to as "McCarthyism", and as a record of actual documented history, it is valuable. However, it was published one and one-half years after the release of the Venona intercepts between the Soviet KGB Secret Service and its American Citizens that were spies, frequently paid, for the Soviet Union and Stalin. Therefore, the opinions expressed, mostly liberal, regarding the documentation presentated in this book, are, at best, dated. At worst, it is a continuing disregard of actual events and the true history of that fascinating time period, when there were hundreds of American Traitors in the US Government.
So true...........2005-01-17
This book shows what a dark time the 50s were for civil liberties and political dissent. Let us hope we are not going toward that again, although I fear we are.
What About the Venona Transcripts?McCarthy was Right.......2003-09-22
For decades Leftists mourned the deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, their son, Meerpool, established a foundation to perserve their memory. For decades Meerpool sought to prove their innocence. Every member of the Democratic party and the entire Left elitist crowd claimed injustice. Then, the Venona transcripts were declassified. The Venona transcripts were the word by word communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States. Those agents were exactly the people McCarthy and Hoover had identified. Julius and Ethel transmitted nuclear secrets that put our country at risk of nuclear attack. Alger Hiss, the Harvard aristocrat, was confirmed as a Soviety Spy. Whittake Chambers and McCarthy were correct.
Terrible!!.......2003-09-16
This book is full of so many lies, it's scary! Today it is proven the McCarthy was 100% right, that in fact there were communists working deep within the the US government from now declassified Russian intercepts. Read Ann Coulter's TREASON instead of this shameful book full of opinion and no fact. Seek the truth, not garbage like this.
Witch-hunt........2003-07-05
As Peter Dale Scott states in his excellent book 'Deep Politics', McCarthyism was one of the main scandals in the US in the twentieth century.
Therefore, this volume composed by Prof. Fried, with the most important documents about this phenomenon (laws, interrogations, judgments ...) is a most useful reminder of what really happened. Also, his analysis of the facts is objective and to the point.
Prof. Fried defines the red scare as 'a mass phenomenon that may have comprised a majority of the electorate, with one abiding passion, that Communism was the sum of human iniquity and that to destroy it all means were justified'. (p. 118)
Some of the villains (R. Reagan, R. Nixon, A. Schlesinger Jr., E. Kazan, L.J. Cobb) in this shameful episode of US politics, made brilliant careers afterwards.
The justification by those who accused colleagues and friends could be right (e. g. Kazan: The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy), but it was a most inhuman behaviour.
As Lillian Hellman wrote: 'But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience'. (p.138)
The overwhelming majority of the accused dropped for good out of their profession. Only a few, like directors Jules Dassin and Joseph Losey, found work in Europe.
I must recommend the above mentioned book by Peter Dale Scott, who gives a brilliant analysis of MacCarthyism: who really pulled the strings behind the veil and why it was abruptly stopped.
A most necessary reminder of an unnecessary and unjustified witch-hunt.
Book Description
In 2002, Susan Schmidt retraced John Smith's 1608 voyage on the Chesapeake Bay. In Landfall along the Chesapeake, a cruising guide for Chesapeake boaters and a field log for naturalists, Schmidt compares the beauty of ancestral legacy and childhood memory to her observations on a 100-day voyage in a 22-foot boat.
As she circles the Bay counterclockwise from Jamestown, she explores Smith's encounters with Native Americans and the Bay's ecological changes over the past four hundred years. On each river and creek, she quotes Smith's journals on matching wits with Powhatan, meeting Pocahontas, surviving thunderstorms, ambush, and a stingray's barb. Anchored on wild creeks, Schmidt observes swans and dragonflies, lightning and sunsets; in port she interviews colorful characters and working watermen about blue crabs and oysters.
Scientists explain the Bay's nitrogen overload, water-level rise, anoxia, Pfiesteria, Kepone, and the Ghost Fleet. Native American chiefs discuss their heritage then and now. Ashore, Schmidt walks on her ancestor's farm, now a military chemical dump, and climbs her grandfather's lighthouse. Despite her despair at bad air quality and diminished fisheries, and her dread of high wind and rough seas, Schmidt expresses gratitude for small-town hospitality and the navigation skills her father taught her.
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East of the Chesapeake
William H. Turner
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Chesapeake Boyhood: Memoirs of a Farm Boy (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf)
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An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake
ASIN: 0801864704 |
Book Description
East of the Chesapeake continues the themes and story lines of Chesapeake Boyhood, William Turner's delightful account of growing up on the lower Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake during the years following the Great Depression. Here are Turner's singular accounts of curious characters, changing seasons, natural wonders, and small-town dramas. Once again, he brings the people and landscape of rural Virginia to life as no one else can. His own drawings illustrate the stories, and they, too, win us over with their honesty and charm.
"Bill Turner writes about characters who might have inspired the likes of Damon Runyon or Erskine Caldwell. Not that Turner is another Runyon or Caldwell. He isn't. He's Bill Turner. An original." -- Bob Hutchinson, Norfolk Virginian Pilot
"Bill Turner has done it again! Another wonderful memoir of growing up and living in a place wonderfully out of sync with the rest of our one-size-fits-all world." -- George Reiger, author of Heron Hill Chronicle
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- Thorough history
- Recommended for environmental studies reading lists
- The Survival of the Planet Is not a Special Interest
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Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography
John R. Wennersten
Manufacturer: Maryland Historical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Talking Tidewater
ASIN: 0938420755
Release Date: 2005-03-22 |
Book Description
Part of the problem in dealing with public perceptions about Chesapeake Bay is that people think it will last forever. This obviously is not true. As oceanographer Jerry Schubel has noted, twenty thousand years ago there was no Chesapeake Bay. Since that time, "There have been other beginnings and endings of other Chesapeake Bays." As we look to the future, however, we can see that increasingly the transformation of the Chesapeake will be more a human phenomenon than a work of nature. We live in times when momentous technological change can alter the face of the planet; and in the depressing words of Bill McKibben, we have already stepped across the threshold of such a change; we are at the end of nature. In the years since the Civil War and most recently since World War II, we have brought about unwelcome changes, literally altering and killing a good deal of the bay's ecosystem. As theologians tell us, we cannot have a cheap grace. Neither can the bay have a future worthy of its name as an overused, polluted and derelict seascape.
Customer Reviews:
Thorough history.......2007-01-12
Wennersten's history was required reading for an English course I was taking on local landscapes and culture of the Chesapeake Bay, and initially, I had a difficult time getting into this book. The tone seemed overly ponderous and the language a bit stiff. However, as I continued to read, I became impressed with Wennersten's scholarship. He drew together tons of sources, provided a balanced view, and actually supported his own conclusions. The chapter on the oyster wars was particularly enjoyable, and the one on more modern environmental damage very eye-opening. I'm sure my jaw dropped open at least a couple of times.
In the end, I donated my copy to the Penn State University library, believing that it should be available to anyone searching for information on the environmental history of the Chesapeake. Not a casual read, definitely, but Wennersten should be proud of what he put together.
Recommended for environmental studies reading lists.......2002-02-08
The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography by educator and political history expert John Wennersten is the informed story of the Chesapeake Bay (also called the Crown Jewel of Maryland) and the Mid-Atlantic region. From its ice age origins 20,000 years ago to how its modern-day health reflects directly on the health of waters all over the world, The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography covers all that human science and history have known about this remarkable body of water. Strongly recommended for environmental studies reading lists and reference collections.
The Survival of the Planet Is not a Special Interest.......2001-12-04
This book confirms Wennersten's place as a premier authority on the Chesapeake Bay region. Like his earlier books, it renders massive, meticulous scholarship in eminently readable form for the general public. Beginning before the arrival of human beings, his story traces the impact of humans on their habitat and its impact on them from the First Native Americans through the tobacco kingdoms of the colonial period and the systematic exploitation of land and water down to the present day, concluding with hopes (dim though they may be) for the future, in the face of the staggering complexity of technological, political and economic forces. With a significance that goes well beyond its regional focus, the book is far from a sentimental plea for the reclamation of lost forests and dying waterways. Instead, Wennersten presents us with a daunting vision of the kind of rethinking that might help us to resist the continued commodification of nature, and to understand the need to reconsider some or our fundamental values. The fabled independence of the waterman, the vaunted creativity of the entrepreneurial spirit, and the generally unchallenged desirability of infinite economic growth all need to be reexamined. This book is an excellent gift for anyone who wants to begin understanding the processes -- natural, economic, cultural and political -- that could very well put human beings themselves on the endangered species list.
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- Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
- 100 Women Who Shaped World History (100 Series)
- A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate: A True Story About the Ups And Downs from Wall Street to Real Estate Leading Up to Phenomenal Returns
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- A Passion for the Impossible: The Life of Lilias Trotter (Northwind Book)
- A Peace Corps Profile
- A Small Place in Italy
- Back in Action: An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude
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