Spycraft

The China Mission , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 839min

A spellbinding narrative of the high-stakes mission that changed the course of America, China, and global politics - and a rich portrait of the towering, complex figure who carried it out. As World War II came to an end, General George Marshall was renowned as the architect of Allied victory. Set to retire, he instead accepted what he thought was a final mission - this time not to win a war, but to stop one. Across the Pacific, conflict between Chinese Nationalists and Communists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. His assignment was to broker a peace, build a Chinese democracy, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III. In his 13 months in China, Marshall journeyed across battle-scarred landscapes, grappled with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and plotted and argued with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his brilliant wife, often over card games or cocktails. The results at first seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice. Its consequences would define the rest of his career, as the secretary of state who launched the Marshall Plan and set the standard for American leadership, and the shape of the Cold War and the US-China relationship for decades to come. It would also help spark one of the darkest turns in American civic life, as Marshall and the mission became a first prominent target of McCarthyism, and the question of "who lost China" roiled American politics. The China Mission traces this neglected turning point and forgotten interlude in a heroic career - a story of not just diplomatic wrangling and guerrilla warfare, but also intricate spycraft and charismatic personalities. Drawing on eyewitness accounts both personal and official, it offers a richly detailed, gripping, close-up, and often surprising view of the central figures of the time - from Marshall, Mao, and Chiang to Eisenhower, Truman, and MacArthu ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/blak/011574/bk_blak_011574_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

Shop: Audible
Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping

High-Tech LEGO Projects

A collection of 16 fascinating scientific and technical projects to build with parts from the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robotics set and other components. A great addition to any STEM curriculum or home library.High Tech LEGO® hijacks the MINDSTORMS® EV3 revolution, showing you how to build creative technical inventions with practical applications. You'll learn to build a dynamic array of working devices for outdoor research, home security, spycraft, and more.Among the book's 16 fascinating projects you'll find a motion-activated animal cam, a Morse code transmitter, a laser security fence, a motion-sensing radar detector, an automated insect trapper, and a heat-seeking infrared cannon. Welcome to a whole new world of building!Every project brings together science, mechanics, electronics, optics, and software to create complex instruments for studying and measuring the world around you, all while maintaining the playfulness of LEGO. Each easy-to-follow model combines illustrated instructions with step-by-step guidance on the engineering methods at play.As you build, you'll learn: "Illegal" modding techniques (that may include drilling, cutting and soldering -- Shh!) Different ways to work with diode laser modules Tricks for modifying EV3 sensors and motors The joy of hacking LEGO light bricks to make a flickering fireplace How to use MINDSTORMS to build your own contraptions!Experiment on your own, and expand on your finished creations. Make a few adjustments so the Critter Cam triggers an alarm to scare away pests, or modify the Doppler radar to detect flammable gases. The possibilities are endless!REQUIREMENTS: LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 Home Edition Windows Vista or higher macOS 10.14 or earlier

Shop: buecher
Price: 16.99 EUR excl. shipping

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 714min

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of the CIA's most valuable spy in the Soviet Union and an evocative portrait of the agency's Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War. While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States. From 1979 to 1985, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer at a military research center, cracked open the secret Soviet military research establishment, using his access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of material about the latest advances in aviation technology, alerting the Americans to possible developments years in the future. He was one of the most productive and valuable spies ever to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union. Tolkachev took enormous personal risks, but so did his CIA handlers. Moscow station was a dangerous posting to the KGB's backyard. The CIA had long struggled to recruit and run agents in Moscow, and Tolkachev became a singular breakthrough. With hidden cameras and secret codes, and in face-to-face meetings with CIA case officers in parks and on street corners, Tolkachev and the CIA worked to elude the feared KGB. Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA, as well as interviews with participants, Hoffman reveals how the depredations of the Soviet state motivated one man to master the craft of spying against his own nation until he was betrayed to the KGB by a disgruntled former CIA trainee. No one has ever told this story before in such detail, and Hoffman's deep knowledge of spycraft, the Cold War, and military technology makes him uniquely qualified to bring listeners this real-life ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Dan Woren. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/rand/004199/bk_rand_004199_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

Shop: Audible
Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping

The Spymaster of Baghdad

'Pulse-pounding' Sinclair McKay 'Truly masterful' Damien Lewis 'Who needs spy fiction, when fact can provide as thrilling a story as this?' Lindsey Hilsum The Spymaster of Baghdad is the gripping story of the top-secret Iraqi intelligence unit that infiltrated the Islamic State. More so than that of any foreign power, the information they gathered turned the tide against the insurgency, paving the way to the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Against the backdrop of the most brutal conflict of recent decades, we chart the spymaster's struggle to develop the unit from scratch in challenging circumstances after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, we follow the fraught relationship of two of his agents, the al-Sudani brothers - one undercover in ISIS for sixteen long months, the other his handler - and we track a disillusioned scientist as she turns bomb-maker, threatening the lives of thousands. With unprecedented access to characters on all sides, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Margaret Coker challenges the conventional view that Western coalition forces defeated ISIS and reveals a page-turning story of unlikely heroes, unbelievable courage and good old-fashioned spycraft. 'Moving, visceral, utterly revelatory. A stunning tour de force by an author who has lived every word of it on the ground' Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo 'This compelling account of how Iraqi agents infiltrated ISIS takes us deep beneath the lurid headlines and into a sharply focused world of courage, ingenuity, terror and love' Sinclair McKay, author of Dresden 'In Margaret Coker's deeply reported, unputdownable account, the previously unknown Iraqi heros of the war against the Islamic State turn out to be braver than Bond and as subtle as Smiley' Lindsey Hilsum, author of In Extremis 'We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Falcons Unit for their important role in the fight against the most lethal terrorist group of our time' Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism

Shop: buecher
Price: 10.99 EUR excl. shipping

The Matchmaker (eBook, ePUB)

Berlin, 1989. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems.Anne had been targeted by the Matchmaker - a high level East German counterintelligence officer - who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his 'Romeos' who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead.The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she's the only person who has seen his face - from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office - and she is the CIA's best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow.Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany. But what if Anne's husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice?Praise for Paul Vidich'Vidich perfectly captures the era's paranoid mood' - The Times 'There is a casual elegance to Vidich's spy fiction (now numbering five books), a seeming effortlessness that belies his superior craftsmanship. Every plot point, character motivation and turn of phrase veers toward the understated, but they are never underwritten. The Matchmaker is an ideal entrance into Vidich's work, one that should compel new readers to plumb his backlist' - New York Times (Editors' Choice)'A terse and convincing thriller... This stand-alone work reaches a new level of moral complexity and brings into stark relief the often contradictory nature of spycraft' - Wall Street Journal'In the manner of Charles Cumming and recent le Carré, Vidich pits spies on the same side against one another in a kind of internal cold war' - Booklist

Shop: buecher
Price: 4.99 EUR excl. shipping

The Spymaster of Baghdad

'The amazing true story of the secret war against ISIS' Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt 'Pulse-pounding' Sinclair McKay 'Truly masterful' Damien Lewis 'Who needs spy fiction, when fact can provide as thrilling a story as this?' Lindsey Hilsum The Spymaster of Baghdad is the gripping story of the top-secret Iraqi intelligence unit that infiltrated the Islamic State. More so than that of any foreign power, the information they gathered turned the tide against the insurgency, paving the way to the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Against the backdrop of the most brutal conflict of recent decades, we chart the spymaster's struggle to develop the unit from scratch in challenging circumstances after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, we follow the fraught relationship of two of his agents, the al-Sudani brothers - one undercover in ISIS for sixteen long months, the other his handler - and we track a disillusioned scientist as she turns bomb-maker, threatening the lives of thousands. With unprecedented access to characters on all sides, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Margaret Coker challenges the conventional view that Western coalition forces defeated ISIS and reveals a page-turning story of unlikely heroes, unbelievable courage and good old-fashioned spycraft. 'Moving, visceral, utterly revelatory. A stunning tour de force by an author who has lived every word of it on the ground' Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo 'This compelling account of how Iraqi agents infiltrated ISIS takes us deep beneath the lurid headlines and into a sharply focused world of courage, ingenuity, terror and love' Sinclair McKay, author of Dresden 'In Margaret Coker's deeply reported, unputdownable account, the previously unknown Iraqi heros of the war against the Islamic State turn out to be braver than Bond and as subtle as Smiley' Lindsey Hilsum, author of In Extremis 'We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Falcons Unit for their important role in the fight against the most lethal terrorist group of our time' Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism

Shop: buecher
Price: 13.99 EUR excl. shipping