Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by hannahstohelit
Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin's Spies by Gordon Corera
medium-paced
4.5
If I have a complaint about this book, it's that it tried to stake out a case for the 2010 Russian spy swap being a harbinger of later Russian espionage but, I'm guessing, was published too early for it to really have the ability to do the deep dive into Trump-era Russian spying and American influence that it could have- that whole part of the book felt much more surface-level than pretty much anything else.
That said, overall it was an extremely readable, interesting, and entertaining description of the careers of the spies on both sides of the 2010 swap, and I found the experience of reading it to be fascinating. Like so many people I haven't given much thought into post-Cold War Russian espionage and learning about its continuity with the USSR was fascinating. I've never seen The Americans, just read some articles about the sons of the "Heathfield-Foley" family and become intrigued. The book gave a fascinating glimpse into the swap, and the continuing ramifications as recently as 2018 with the Skripal poisoning.
That said, overall it was an extremely readable, interesting, and entertaining description of the careers of the spies on both sides of the 2010 swap, and I found the experience of reading it to be fascinating. Like so many people I haven't given much thought into post-Cold War Russian espionage and learning about its continuity with the USSR was fascinating. I've never seen The Americans, just read some articles about the sons of the "Heathfield-Foley" family and become intrigued. The book gave a fascinating glimpse into the swap, and the continuing ramifications as recently as 2018 with the Skripal poisoning.