Spies: The Secret Showdown Between America and Russia

"This is about the Cold War and the intelligence war between NATO , focusing on the US, and the Soviet Union. It’s got lots of interesting stories and facts about things that went on, like the Americans building some sort of bugging device on an underground Soviet communications cable in Berlin. Even though the CIA thought it was this incredible achievement, apparently the Soviets had already known about it for seven months and they just fed fake information through it. The book also focuses on smaller stories, like a British spy defecting to North Korea, and eventually to the Soviets. It’s got stories from every corner of the game or battle that happened in the backrooms of the USSR and NATO. Yes, it’s very much telling a story. It’s a nonfiction narrative. It goes through all the way from the early Cold War—the original breakdown in relations and how they were already spying on each other—to the development of technology through the years, till it got to a point where you can just have a single bug on your shoulder. The spying technology went from a giant computer in a room to what could be stored in a briefcase."