''The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal'' is a

non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...

history book by

David E. Hoffman David Emanuel Hoffman (born August 5, 1953) is an American writer and journalist, a contributing editor to ''The Washington Post''. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for a book about the legacy of the nuclear arms race. Journalism Hoffman was born ...

Synopsis

The book covers the life of Russian engineer

Adolf Tolkachev Adolf Georgiyevich Tolkachev (russian: Адольф Георгиевич Толкачёв; 6 January 1927 in Aktyubinsk (now Aktobe), Kazakh ASSR, Soviet Union – 24 September 1986) was a Soviet electronics engineer who provided key documents to ...

, nicknamed the "Billion Dollar Spy", who was executed by the Soviet Union after being caught passing information on classified radar technology to

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

agents.

Reviews

The book received mostly positive reviews.

Lawrence D. Freedman Sir Lawrence David Freedman, (born 7 December 1948) is a British academic, historian and author with specialising in foreign policy, international relations and strategy. He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies" and wa ...

, writing for ''

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...

'', described it as a "must-read" and praised it for " escribingin such detail what it meant to run American agents in Cold War–era Moscow". Bob Drogan of the ''

LA Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' said that "To his credit, Hoffman describes the drab reality of most espionage work: long waits, endless paperwork, bumbling bureaucracy and often shoddy equipment." ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' described it as "an intricate, mesmerizing portrayal of the KGB-CIA spy culture".

Adaptation

A thriller movie based on the book was announced in 2021 starring

Mads Mikkelsen Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen, (; born 22 November 1965) is a Danish actor. Originally a gymnast and dancer, he rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the ''Pusher'' film trilogy (1996, 2004), Det ...

References

2015 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Non-fiction books about the Central Intelligence Agency Doubleday (publisher) books {{ColdWar-book-stub