BOOK SPOTLIGHT: The Spy's Son

The Spy's Son: How CIA Officer Jim Nicholson Twice Betrayed Country and Kin for Russia

by Bryan Denson 


 
Investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Bryan Denson tells the

riveting story of the Nicholsons, father and son co-conspirators who deceived their country by selling national secrets to Russia. 

Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA's top veteran case officers. By day, he taught spycraft at the CIA's clandestine training center, The Farm. By night, he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. 

But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia's foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents. In 1997, Nicholson became the highest ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. 

But his duplicity didn't stop there. While behind the bars of a federal prison, the former mole systematically groomed the one person he trusted most to serve as his stand-in: his youngest son, Nathan. 

When asked to smuggle messages out of prison to Russian contacts, Nathan saw an opportunity to be heroic and to make his father proud. 

Tyson

WFL Staff Reads moves to the WFL Reference Blog

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Deb enjoyed The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (the audiobook)

Jefferson Mays narration of Simon Mawer's family epic begins in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia. As the Landauer's build their dream house, political events unfold which threaten their home and their lives.  Mays' voice reflects the tension of people whose homeland is about to be torn apart, whose fears include impending pogroms, work camps and Nazi occupation.  The house, built as a "modern house adapted to the future rather than the past, to the openness of modern living" remains standing in stark contrast to unfolding world events.

-DB

Gifts of the Crow

The Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans
     by John Marzluff, Tony Angell (Illustrator)

 

 Suddenly a crow turns his head, caws softly, and glides away, landing on a lamppost directly above a blonde woman. The woman, Lijana Holmes, smiles and calls him "Bela" as she offers him a breakfast of eggs and meat, which she prepares daily. Five-and-a-half years ago we captured Bela and affixed light plastic rings to his legs for identification. So whenever he sees us, the old crow cocks his head, stares, takes flight and swoops low--right at us--screaming a harsh call that we immediately recognize as a bird scold. His family and neighbors hear the cry and join in, flying toward Bela to support his attack, and soon they, too, share his rage. The mobbing crows circle and scream above our heads just as they would do to a predator. Bela's discriminating actions give us remarkable and invaluable information, proving that crows can recognize and remember human faces. We wonder when, or if, he will ever forget (or forgive) us. The gifts of the crow are physical, metaphorical, and far-reaching.

 Although packed with the latest research this is far from a dry academic tome.  Instead the authors use plenty of anecdotes which will keep you fascinated.  You will be amazed at just how smart these social birds are. 

Tyson

 

Rob Recommends "The King's Speech" (the movie)

It’s not often that I agree with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I, for one, would trust me a lot sooner than I would trust the Academy to pick anything but Best Make-up. I can’t be lobbied and my vote can’t be bought. I never have any friends or relatives up for nomination and I have never taken a film course. So you can believe me when I say that The King’s Speech is a really good film. As you no doubt know, the movie is about King George VI, his terrible stutter, his non-fawning speech coach and yes, his big speech on the eve of World War II. Not an obviously attractive subject. (What, no chase scenes?)  See it for the acting, a satisfying story and especially the interplay between King (Colin Firth) and “doctor” (Geoffrey Rush).  

A note: While the main storyline is apparently pretty close to “true,” some history has been mangled in the filmmaking process. 

Another note: Check out Debra's post on the recorded book version.

Recent Photography Books

Whether you are hoping to take some nice family photos at the beach this summer with your new digital camera, are interested in learning advanced lighting details for your photographic subjects, or enjoy reading essays on photography, you may enjoy some of our newest books in this genre.

Rethinking digital photography : making & using  contemporary & traditional photo tools by John Neel.

The life and death of buildings : on photography and time by Joel Smith

Light essentials : a subject-centric approach to lighting for digital photography by Don Giannatti

Believing is seeing : observations on the mysteries of photography by Errol Morris

Why photographs work : 52 great images - who made them, what makes them special and why by George Barr

Composition : from snapshots to great shots by Laurie Excell

500 Cameras : 170 years of phtographic innovation by Todd Gustavson

Simply beautiful photographs by Annie Griffiths

-DB

Megan recommends: The Kissing List

The Kissing List by Stephanie Reents

Don't let the title of the book or its cover fool you.  This book doesn't qualify as chick-lit.  Rather, you're getting linked short stories by an author who is a former Rhodes Scholar.  Yes, there's a single girl in the city theme, but it's more along the lines of HBO's Girls than Sex and the City.  Reents is a talented writer.

maf

I loved listening to Diane Keaton's Then Again

Diane Keaton's remarkable, insightful, stunningly written memoir about her mother and herself would be enough of a great read on its own. The audio version, narrated by Keaton, enhances and embellishes the story  with the 'voice' of the author - at times funny, sad, desperate, confused, hopeful and brimming with love. We meet Diane's mother through Dorothy's journals, kept over a lifetime.  We get a glimpse into the mother/daughter relationship, hear stories about the Keaton and Hall families and  begin to understand how tremendous creative energy can be passed on from one generation to the next. Keaton also shares her sentiments about her own career, boyfriends, phobias and illnesses.

-DB

Megan recommends: Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

This is a great novel about four women from an Boston Irish Catholic family and their relation to the family's summer home in Maine.  Alice, the matriarch, Kathleen, the daughter, Ann Marie, the daughter-in-law, and Maggie, the granddaughter are the four protagonists.  Each has a story to tell in alternating chapters and ethnicity, tribalism and religious identity have strong influences on all of their lives.  This book has lots of local color and reminded me of the novels of Alice McDermott. 

maf

Rob Recommends The Columnist

A novel in the form of a memoir of an extremely obnoxious a##h##e. I’m guessing it’s harder than we think:  to have the narrator prove his arrogance in almost every paragraph yet be oblivious to how his audience is judging him. And this is what makes The Columnist a fun read—catching every self-serving rationalization, every twist of a knife told as stroke of fortune and every conceited deceit disguised as innocent miscommunication. And the story itself? We follow the career of Brandon Sladder from novice (but self-inflated, nevertheless) reporter to influential (yes, and still self-inflated) columnist and opinion-maker. Along the way Sladder uses all who would befriend him—girlfriends, editors, secretaries, prostitutes and sources—dumping them when they were no longer needed. The author works real people into the plot, but never makes it explicit just which (if any) big shot columnist Sladder is modeled on. (The play based on the book does name Joseph Alsop as the satirical target.)  Those old enough to remember the heyday of the Lippmans, Alsops, Restons, Pearsons of the last century will especially enjoy this book.

Are We Alone?

The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet

     by Dimitar Sasselov 

Intended for general readers, this volume on the history and possibilities of astronomical and biochemical research examines the study of super-earths, distant planets similar to earth that allow scientists to study how earth may have been millennia ago. Sasselov (astronomy, Harvard U.) explores the implications of these discoveries for biological research in chapters which discuss both the study of extraterrestrial bodies and the search for the origins of life on earth.

Life of any kind has yet to be found anyplace except on the Earth.  However, within the last few years astronomers have found over 3000 exoplanet candidates.  In December the Kelper satalite teleoscope found two earth sized planets orbiting sun like stars.  The planets were not in the sun's habitable zone.  This book has the cutting edge information on the search for alien worlds.

Tyson

City of Fortune

City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas
     by Roger Crowley

The rise and fall of the Venetian empire stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. City of Fortune is framed around two of the great collisions of world history: the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminated in the sacking of Constantinople and the carve-up of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, and the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503.   Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion.

Crowley's narrative is a quick page turner for history lovers. He does a great job explaining the how Venice controlled the spice trade between Europe and Asia.  A trade which put them at odds with the Mongols, Genoans, and Turks.

Tyson

Sue Recommends The Innocent by David Baldacci

David Baldacci is best known for his Camel Club Series featuring Oliver Stone, but fans should try out his newest book, The Innocent. This standalone thriller

highlights an unnamed government agency that employs snipers, such as Will Robie, to perform sanctioned assassinations usually overseas but occasionally in the U.S.

The problem with Will Robie is that he has a moral center, a conscience, and has the ability to think for himself.  Is his job assignment to kill a suspected terrorist (who turns out to be a mother with 2 small children AND an FBI agent) a political ploy that is connected with the murder of the parents of a 14 year old gifted student who has been in and out of foster homes? Can Will remain objective or will his sympathy for this new orphan threaten his and her lives and draw him further into a side of Washington that you and I do not even want to think exists?

 If this is your introduction to David Baldacci, you will enjoy a fully thought out plot with lots of twists and turns and then be looking up his other books to continue your enjoyment.  I, for one, hope that Will Robie will become the main character in more of the author's stories.  SH

Rob Recommends Listening to Richistan

My family listened to Richistan, by Robert Frank, on a recent car trip to New Jersey. Frank is a Wall Street Journal reporter who got himself assigned to cover the super-wealthy beat in America. He spent a year traveling the country, observing, studying and interviewing the very wealthiest Americans. The author came to believe that the best way to understand this group of millionaires is to see them as inhabiting a separate country. To help the rest of us understand this nation’s culture and people, Frank wrote this book, Richistan: a Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich. Richistan is a fascinating and funny glimpse into a world most of us could never imagine. It’s a world of $700,000 watches, 300 foot yachts, millionaire support groups, $25,000 a plate charity dinners and residents who don’t know how many cars they own. In one particularly interesting chapter, Frank takes us through butler training at Butler Boot Camp. The rigors of the training course say more about those doing the employing (“principals”) than about the trainees themselves. (FYI, the top graduates of elite butler schools earn $75-120,000 per year.) Throughout, Frank accomplishes the nearly impossible feat of neither fawning over nor disparaging the citizens of Richistan. See what you think…

Deb enjoyed Bill Cunningham - New York

If you enjoy the New York Times Style section,  you are surely familiar with Bill Cunningham's work. As the pre-eminent chronicler of fashion trends and high society events, Cunningham's photography has graced the pages of the Times for decades. An official selection at the 2010 Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival,  filmmaker Richard Press documents Cunningham's bohemian lifestyle, in stark contrast  to the flamboyance of many of his subjects.  A man of the street, Cunningham's bicycle is his only mode of transportation, in all weather, capturing life in the city.   Well known as one of the most important people in New York fashion,  his 'On the Street' column documents eclectic, individual looks worn by everyday New Yorkers.  Check out this film and watch an artist at work.

This Mighty Scourge

This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War
     by James M. McPherson

 The Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson is America's preeminent Civil War historian. Now, in this collection of provocative and illuminating essays, McPherson offers fresh insight into many of the most enduring questions about the Civil War. Topics include the Lost Cause Mystique, Peace Negotiations, Myths of the confederacy and Jesse James.

McPherson's essays ask; Why did the war come?, What were each sides objectives? How did each side try to obtain those objectives? How good was the leadership of both sides? What was the impact of the war on those who lived through it? A very interesting and thought provoking read.

Tyson

Megan recommends: The Call

The Call by Yannick Murphy

I really liked this short novel with an alternative style.  Told in the form of notes in a journal, the story concerns the life of a veterinarian and his family in rural New England.  The veterinarian's son is injured in a hunting accident and the family has to deal with the aftermath of that.  A quirky book that is a celebration of the simple joys and daily rhythms of family life. 

maf

Peggy Recommends Two Upbeat Films; Romantics Anonymous and The Women on the Sixth Floor

No time or money to take in Paris this springtime? Pick one or both of these delightful  and feel-good DVDs and be in France instantly courtesy of your remote.

 In Romantics Anonymous, Jean-Rene and Angelique fall in love drawn together through a shared passion for chocolate but neither is able to express how they feel. Sadly, their crippling shyness is driving them apart. But eventually, they manage to overcome their lack of self-confidence, and risk baring their true feelings. The Huffington Post called this "one of France's best new films."

  In The Women on the Sixth Floor it's Paris, 1960. Jean-Louis lives a bourgeois existence with his neurotic socialite wife Suzanne while their children are away at boarding school. The couple's world is turned upside down when they hire Maria, a Spanish maid who introduces Jean-Louis to an alternative reality a few stories up on the sixth floor. Befriending a group of sassy Spanish maids, the women teach him there's more to life than stocks and bonds, and their influence on the house ultimately transforms everyone's life. PM

Rob Recommends the documentary There But for Fortune

I will admit it hadn’t occurred to me to mention There But for Fortune here in Staff Reads. But I happened across a list of top movies for 2011 and there it was (with a rottentomatoes.com rating by critics of 100% positive).  The film documents the life and work of Phil Ochs—the protest singer form the 1960s and 70s.  There But for Fortune breaks no new ground in movie-making, but does a very nice job of placing Ochs in the storm of counter-cultural/anti-war protest that seemed to envelop the decade. With video, songs, stills and interviews, Kenneth Bowser the director, documents the troubled life of Ochs the artist and activist and the movement he was part of.

 I had assumed that the film’s appeal for me had to do with my having grown up listening to his songs. Plus his family and mine criss-crossed in a couple of minor ways in New York.   So it was with some surprise that I read the reviews from sources as far apart as the Boston Herald and the New York Times crediting the movie as a fitting tribute to a man worth remembering.

In addition to the movie, the Library owns seven CDs byOchs.

Sue Recommends The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

Give TheTechnologists, an historical suspense novel written by Matthew Pearl, a try!  

 If you have any interest in Boston in the 1860s and the beginning rivalry between MIT and Harvard, this book is for you.  Pearl does an incredible job of bringing the first graduating class from MIT to life.  

He researched the MIT's first class's student journals and other histories of Boston and MIT to paint a picture of life in Boston in the 1860s.  The suspicion that Professor Rogers and his students provoked because they chose to take science past the theory and apply it to make a better world may seemed to be where Harvard and MIT differed and the friction began between the two schools.  

Add to this a mystery that of fictional unexplainable events that the students investigate through science and you have a novel with appeal to history, science, and suspense fans alike.

I listened to the Book on CD and found that it was difficult to shut it off and I kept reaching for the next disc to keep the story going.  All I can say is try it, you will certainly like it!

Also try Pearl's Dante Club that is set in the same time period in Boston.

SH