Soviet Union

During the 1970s, a clandestine American agency known as The Institute finds people who are prodigies, enhances their abilities — and turns them into spies. Adam Walker, the Institute’s most decorated success story, is exceptional because he is a prodigy at everything — except understanding people. When a rogue genius creates a cutting-edge aircraft for the Soviets, The Institute sends Adam and aeronautics specialist Nathanial Hemmel to Paris to investigate. But their simple research mission is quickly thrown into chaos when Adam encounters an obstacle his training could not prepare ...

This book explores the dramatic difference between the Russian and US approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities from art and the economy to the respective national cultures; illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military, and cultural realities and power are no longer what American "elites" think they are by addressing Russia's new and elevated capacities in the areas of traditional warfare, as well as cyberwarfare and space; and studies several ways in-depth in which the US can simply stumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the turning points of World War II. Within six months, the invasion bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow, and the Eastern Front proved to be the decisive theater in the defeat of the Third Reich. Ever since, most historians have agreed that this was Hitler's gravest mistake. In Hitler's Great Gamble, James Ellman argues that while Barbarossa was a gamble and perverted by genocidal Nazi ideology, it was not doomed from the start.

In this engaging life of the 20th century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics.

This is a story about a legend in that part of Africa called “Africa in Miniature”, “The Microcosm of Africa.” There was a time in the land when the story of Josef Nana Njike’s life and death became a popular narration. Different versions of the account have been told by those born before him, people who grew up with him, the mothers and fathers whose lives he touched, and the children he inspired. Josef’s life story quickly became a third-person narration, and from that, the legend was born. Still, all the narratives had one thing in common―the disadvantaged Josef Nana Njike ...

Agents of Influence reveals the secret history of an intelligence agency gone out of control, accountable to no one but itself and intent on subverting Western politics on a near-inconceivable scale. In 1985, 1,300 KGB officers were stationed in the USA. The FBI only had 350 counter-intelligence officers. Since the early days of the Cold War, the KGB seduced parliamentarians and diplomats, infiltrated the highest echelons of the Civil Service, and planted fake news in papers across the world.

This new Captivating History audiobook serves as an overview of Russian history over the span of more than a millennium, from the foundation of the Russian state by the Viking Prince Rurik in AD 862 until the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

No one can predict the future. Julian certainly couldn’t. Still, as Paul “PC” Roman sees his grandmother unexpectedly at an Antwerp hotel, he can’t help but think this is what she wished for. He’s well-connected, happy, and wealthy, and his entire family shares in his success. Julian has every right to be proud of her grandson. It turns out that PC doesn’t know his grandmother at all. First, he sees her having dinner with a mysterious man. She brushes off the encounter, but PC begins to feel that something has brought Julian to Antwerp—something important. His instincts prove ...

The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia.

Paul D'Anieri explores the dynamics within Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the West, that emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union and eventually led to war in 2014. Proceeding chronologically, this book shows how Ukraine's separation from Russia in 1991, at the time called a "civilized divorce", led to what many are now calling "a new Cold War".

Adventures of an Elephant Boy is another brilliant political satire filled with heart and humor by the author of The Mouse That Roared. Living in a quiet village on the Ganges River with the freedom to do as he pleases, a simple elephant boy named Hari Ranjit Singh is selected by the Best of All Possible Nations (any resemblance to the U.S.A. being wholly intentional) to be its personal guest. On his way there, Hari learns that in order to have liberty and happiness in the rest of the world, you need lots of laws…lots and lots of laws. “Some writers have a talent for narrative. Some ...

In 2015, Russia’s Anti-Doping Centre was suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) following revelations of an elaborate state-sponsored doping programme. Involving a nearly undetectable steroid delivery system known as ‘Duchesse cocktail’, tampering and switching of urine samples and a complex state-sanctioned cover-up, the programme was masterminded by Grigory Rodchenkov. The Rodchenkov Affair tells the full, unadulterated story that was first glimpsed in Bryan Fogel’s award-winning documentary and still continues to captivate and shock the world.

This book explores why there is a major war again in Europe. Putin's actions need to be understood if not forgiven. With the Ukraine conflict seen as a proxy war of NATO versus Russia, how likely is the fighting to spread?

They seem like perfect Americans. Ash is a prize-winning journalist. David is a major Washington powerbroker. Corinna is a stunningly beautiful Justice Department lawyer. But they're too perfect to be true. And they're not American at all. Trained to live like Americans, they're elite foreign plants, threatening the highest echelons of American society, with a top-secret agenda even they don't know about. And now they're out of control.... The game has changed, and no one has told them the rules. Betrayed by their own country, thrown into a world they cannot trust, three people are about to...

Chris Knowles was born on October 24th, 1949. He was raised in Washington, DC. He entered The Sidwell Friends School, Washington's most exclusive coeducational college preparatory school, in September of 1952 at the age of two. In the Fall of 1962, he was 13 years old and beginning his Eighth Grade year when the photointerpreters at the National Photo Interpretation Center at the Washington Navy Yard detected Soviet offensive ballistic missiles stationed on the island of Cuba. This marked the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the intervening years, he attended The University of ...

In September 1972 the Soviet national hockey team played a series of eight games against a team of Canadian NHL professionals known as Team Canada. The “Summit Series” was the first ever contest between the best hockey players of both countries and was intended to settle the question of who was better. The first four games were in Canada and the last four games were in Moscow. Many Canadian sportswriters predicted an easy Canadian victory in the series. However, the Soviets won the first game on September 2 by a score of 7-3. Team Canada had its hands full. By the fifth game, Team ...

In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes listeners from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine. In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting—from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17—to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.

Initially a victory line where Allies met at the end of WWII, the Iron Curtain quickly became the front of a new kind of war. But what has the Iron Curtain left in its wake? Timothy Phillips travels its full 3,000-mile route to craft this new people's history of a defining twentieth-century conflict. Here, in the borderlands where a powerful clash of civilizations took form in concrete and barbed wire, he uncovers the remarkable stories of everyday people forever imprinted by life in the Curtain's shadow.

Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on seventeen years of on-the-ground coverage.

As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night.