Well, the mole was caught…but readers expecting a counterespionage thriller will be underwhelmed.
A true tale of counterespionage—the identification, stalking, and capture of a devastatingly effective CIA mole.
The second of Denson’s FBI Files casebooks (after The Unabomber,2019) plays more like a comedy than a thriller. Elements include a CIA functionary’s suddenly driving a Jaguar, fending off a shrewish Colombian mistress-turned–second-wife in recorded conversations, and missing a clandestine meeting in Bogotá because he gets the time wrong, as well as lurking FBI investigators who train carefully to pull quick garbage-can switcheroos, take 45 minutes to pick a lock at the suspect’s house, and manage to lose him on Washington streets despite a radio tracer in his car. But there was nothing funny about Ames’ actions—for nearly nine years between 1985 and 1994 he banked nearly $2 million for feeding bundles of top-secret documents to the KGB that, among other disasters, largely wiped out the CIA’s Soviet assets—and the author preserves an earnest tone as he describes the FBI unit’s methodical gathering of evidence, its surveillance procedures, and how Ames and his co-conspirator wife were persuaded to confess. Still, along with being perhaps startled at how easy it apparently was to receive authorization for wiretaps, break-ins, and like assaults on personal rights, readers may well come away marveling at how both Ames and his pursuers seemed to just bumble along.
Well, the mole was caught…but readers expecting a counterespionage thriller will be underwhelmed. (photos, author’s note, glossary, source list, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19916-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Essential.
A measured corrective to pervasive myths about what is often referred to as the “first Thanksgiving.”
Contextualizing them within a Native perspective, Newell (Passamaquoddy) touches on the all-too-familiar elements of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving and its origins and the history of English colonization in the territory now known as New England. In addition to the voyage and landfall of the Mayflower, readers learn about the Doctrine of Discovery that arrogated the lands of non-Christian peoples to European settlers; earlier encounters between the Indigenous peoples of the region and Europeans; and the Great Dying of 1616-1619, which emptied the village of Patuxet by 1620. Short, two- to six-page chapters alternate between the story of the English settlers and exploring the complex political makeup of the region and the culture, agriculture, and technology of the Wampanoag—all before covering the evolution of the holiday. Refreshingly, the lens Newell offers is a Native one, describing how the Wampanoag and other Native peoples received the English rather than the other way around. Key words ranging from estuary to discover are printed in boldface in the narrative and defined in a closing glossary. Nelson (a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa) contributes soft line-and-color illustrations of the proceedings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Essential. (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-72637-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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