Battleground Berlin : CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War - 97 edition

"Written with great authority, original research, skillful analysis, and a unique perspective, this book tells the definitive story of the U.S. Soviet intelligence war in Berlin in the first phase of the Cold War."

--Edward Jay Epstein

"A troika of erstwhile adversaries team up to deliver an absorbing and authoritative inside view of how American and Soviet-bloc intelligence agencies plied their offbeat trade in divided Berlin during the first 15 years of the Cold War. . . . Eye-opening detail on cloak-and-dagger operations in a conquered capital city that once threatened to alter the balance of world power and breach the world's hard-won peace."

--Kirkus Reviews

"New and important access to recently declassified files along with the authors' own knowledge make this a crucial addition to filling an important gap in our understanding of the Cold War. The book is not only authoritative, it is also well written and possesses the qualities of a very engaging espionage novel."

--Publishers Weekly

"A balanced and authoritative history that spans a crucial time and place. . . . [This book] breaks new ground, and if it is neither the complete story nor the last word, it has pointed the way for others. Documents without eyewitness interpretation can be sterile and misinterpreted; personal memories without documents are inevitably selective and sometimes self-justifying. The authors have successfully brought them together."

--Markus Wolf, Los Angeles Times

"The first account of espionage in the city that represented the front line of the cold war as seen from both sides. . . . The book does present a remarkably balanced view of the Berlin spy wars."

--Joseph E. Persico, New York Times Book Review

"Rarely if ever before has such a complete and authoritative insiders' account of the game of espionage ever been put into a single volume. . . . The overall picture that emerges in this account is one of the tremendous difficulty the Russians experienced in the face of the fact that West Germany was rapidly becoming far more prosperous and powerful than the East. That is what led ultimately to the construction of the wall in 1961 and the end of the phase of the espionage battle so comprehensively outlined in this book."

--Richard Bernstein, New York Times

"A fascinating and important new account of the opening campaigns of the secret cold war waged by the CIA and the KGB which retells in detail, much of it new, the ways in which Soviet and American intelligence services fought their secret, bloodless war."

--Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books

"This is a major contribution to the intelligence history of the Cold War."

--Eliot A. Cohen, Foreign Affairs

"Provides much useful background on how the U.S. could predict Soviet reaction to the Berlin airlift and what really happened in connection with the famous 'Berlin Tunnel' in the late 1950s. . . . A valuable aid to comparing U.S. and Soviet intelligence operating 'eyeball to eyeball' over the course of its time span."

--Booklist

"A classic of modern intelligence literature drawn from archives and personal recollections. . . . Moles, double-agents, Soviet antisemetic disinformation campaigns, dead drops, recruitments--the stuff that makes good spy novels, with the welcome blessing of being factual. If you read no other intelligence book this season, make it this one."

--Joseph Goulden, Washington Times

Yale University Press Web Site, April, 2002