Politically neutral, educational, and sometimes insightful adventures of a working spy before and after retirement.
An ex–intelligence officer delivers a mixture of autobiography, insider tales, and occasional derring-do.
In his first book, former staff CIA operations officer Roy writes that his youthful ambition to become a spy owed less to a macho character than to his love of travel. After finishing law school and passing the bar, he underwent the yearlong CIA training course, which included more fireworks and hardship than he encountered during a 13-year career (1983 to 1996), mostly in Latin America and the former Yugoslavia. Historians have revealed many of the CIA’s disastrous covert operations and intelligence failures, but few deny that its central function—gathering information on foreign nations’ leaders and public opinion—has been important. The author emphasizes that governments (no less than individuals) ignore accurate information that contradicts their beliefs. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Yugoslavia began breaking up. American policy insisted that the nation remain united despite CIA warnings that almost no one in Yugoslavia wanted this outcome and that murderous hatred between ethnic groups might require outside intervention. Roy recounts these dismal events and his own adventures when, after several years and many mass atrocities, the U.S. took notice. He adds that, having ignored the facts on Yugoslavia, the American government did the same with Iraq. Despite pressure from above, the CIA could not find a good reason to invade, but the leaders went ahead anyway. Leaving the service, Roy became an entrepreneur, first in the former Yugoslavia and then in Iraq immediately after the 2003 conquest. He recounts often hair-raising adventures, but readers curious about the nature of his business will be frustrated. The book is less an autobiography than a collection of short chapters recounting the mechanics of intelligence-gathering (successes as well as failures), the occasional narrow escape, essays on world hot spots, complaints about political leaders, and plenty of CIA gossip.
Politically neutral, educational, and sometimes insightful adventures of a working spy before and after retirement.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63388-588-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
