Triumphs And Tragedies: Corregidor And Its Aftermath

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an amazing story.......2006-06-13

I met Arthur Baker in April, 2006 and after his telling me just 5 minutes of his story of his capture and time as a P.O.W. during WWII I couldn't wait to read his book. This is the story of a regular man who lived and survived extraordinary circumstances. This is a light and easy read that I strongly recommend to anyone with in interest of those great Americans who fought for freedom during World War II.

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Black comedy.......2002-01-28

This book bordered on the surreal due to Sakharov's irony free style. He would describe some craziness involving KGB interference in his life or Soviet life in general and then suddenly break off to describe theoretical quantum physics for three pages. This juxtaposition between the irrational and rational makes the book unexpectedly comic at times.

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Should be reprinted--a classic of enduring value
Memoirs of a double agent who betrayed a dying Soviet elite

HIGH TREASON (High Treason)
Vladimir Sakharov
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB

ASIN: 0345326482
Release Date: 1985-03-12

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Should be reprinted--a classic of enduring value.......2000-04-08

Not necessarily for students, this paperback from the Ballentine Espionage/Intelligence Library is sensational. I had already been a case officer overseas when I read it, and I read it with real admiration for the Soviet Division and the case officers who had the luxury of doing it "right." From the overseas evaluations to the discreet subway signal of interest in Moscow to the follow-up that resulted in a recruitment in place and an ultimate exfiltration across the desert of Kuwait, this is a magnificent account of "the way it is supposed to be" in the clandestine service. It has a spy's kind of happy ending-really rotten treatment by CIA security blockheads during the resettlement program, a very long drunken period, hit bottom, and finally get clean and work your way free from the system on your own.

Memoirs of a double agent who betrayed a dying Soviet elite.......1998-01-16

The compelling, fast-paced and ironic memoir describes in the first person, the life of a priveliged young member of the post-World War II Soviet nomeclature--the 100 or so families who ran the USSR. Groomed as a foreign ministry official in Moscow and inevitably drawn into KGB operations he loathed, Sakarov strikes out against the Soviet elite he grows to despise for its corruption of Russia, including his own father. Assigned to the Middle East for the KG, he joins the CIA as its double agent and eventually helps in the struggle to support Anwar Sadat's rise in Egypt. Compromised and hunted, he must flee to the U.S. abandoning wife and daughter in disgrace. Sakaraov's story is filled with insights into Moscow society, why and how the Soviet Empire exploited Russia and its own. It is a psychological spy classic written with bright clarity brought by co-author Umberto Tosi.

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Wonderful Biography of the Moral Conscience of a Nation
Absolutely First-Rate
Excellent book
I'm just reporting on the political parts

Sakharov: A Biography
Richard Lourie
Manufacturer: Brandeis
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Binding: Hardcover

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An Anthology Of Russian Literature From Earliest Writings To Modern Fiction: Introduction To A Culture
Memoirs
Russia: A History
Global Studies: Russia, the Eurasian Republics and Central/Eastern Europe (Global Studies Russia, the Eurasian Republics, and Central/Eastern Europe)
Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages

ASIN: 1584652071

Book Description

"As a thinker, as a man of uncanny judgment and courage, [Andrei Sakharov] was the one figure in the drama of the Soviet collapse who was the equal of Jefferson, Adams, and the rest," wrote David Remnick in The New Yorker. One of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century--the "father of the Soviet H-bomb"--Sakharov won even greater renown later in life as the leading dissident in the Soviet Union. His courageous and untiring activities in defense of human rights won him the Nobel Peace Prize, six years of exile in the closed city of Gorky, and finally, official restitution as a symbol of Gorbachev's perestroika.

Richard Lourie, who translated Sakharov's memoirs, has now written the first full biography of this towering figure of the last century. Drawing on a wide range of sources--including previously secret KGB files, as well as Sakharov's own correspondence--Lourie tells the story of a life intimately bound up with Soviet history. With the H-bomb, Sakharov made the Soviet Union a superpower; with his courage and moral conviction, he made it accountable to the world for its treatment of its citizens. His untimely death in December 1989 cut short a budding career as a politician, for at the end of his life, Sakharov had been elected to the Congress of People's Deputies and was engaged in a campaign to reform the Soviet constitution.

As a scientist, Sakharov not only helped change the world through the creation of thermonuclear weapons, he also engaged in theoretical research whose ultimate significance is yet to be determined. As a Russian, he has been ranked by his own people with Lenin and Stalin in terms of his influence on the country. As a human being, he set a standard for principled dissent and compassion acknowledged the world over. This intelligent, detailed biography does justice to all aspects of his multi-faceted achievements.

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Wonderful Biography of the Moral Conscience of a Nation.......2004-09-20

Nadezhda Mandelstam once wrote that "a person with inner freedom, memory, and fear is that reed, that twig that changes the direction of a rushing river." Andrei Sakharov, scientist and father of the Soviet H-bomb, was such a twig, a twig that helped changed the course of Soviet and Russian history.

How does a man evolve from being a relatively apolitical nuclear physicist in the 1940s to being the moral conscience of a nation striving for democracy by the time of his death in 1989? How does a man who was offered and provided all the material comforts available to the preeminent scientist in the USSR turn away from those temptations and choose, instead, to stand a lonely vigil outside kangaroo courts intent on hounding dissidents who dared to speak out against the Soviet regime?

Lourie's marvelous biography of Sakharov does a fine job of setting out both how and why Sakharov evolved from a hero of the USSR with direct telephone access to the Kremlin into a pariah who was hounded, slandered, and finally sent into internal exile in the closed city of Gorky. Yet, by the end of his life, Sakharov, this mere twig, managed to face down and indeed outlast those that set the political might of a nation against him.

Lourie comes to Sakharov with an impressive background in Russian and Soviet history and literature. He has translated numerous works of fiction, including works by Vladimir Voinovich, and also translated Sakharov's Memoirs. (The tragic story of the destruction of numerous drafts of Sakharov's Memoirs by the KGB is set out in detail in Lourie's biography.)

Sakharov is set out in a straightforward, chronological fashion. It begins with Sakharov's family background and his childhood and early adult years. Lourie moves relatively quickly through Sakharov's birth in 1921 and his childhood and teen years. Sakharov , along with his families supported the Soviet regime. Dissent was not an issue for them. Sakharov always considered himself a loyal patriot devoted to the Soviet Union. Lourie sets out in detail Sakharov's early interest in math and the sciences and his academic development. By the time World War II had started it was clear that Sakharov would have a career in the sciences.

After the German invasion of Russia, Sakharov quickly found work in the area of munitions. It was here that Sakharov had his first run-ins with authority. Unlike many of his colleagues who was willing to brook interference from unknowing Commissars. Fortunately for Sakharov his suggestions and mechanical innovations were critical in aiding the Soviet war effort and he was allowed far greater flexibility in his approach to work and science than many of his peers.

Lourie then traces the path that took Sakharov from improving the quality of tank shells and munitions to being the lead scientist in charge of the development of the Soviet atomic and H-bombs. Here Sakharov crossed paths with Stalin, Beria, and most of the other leaders of his time. It is clear that Sakharov would not have survived a failure. Sakharov was committed to the project and believed developing these weapons were in the best interests of Russia. The projects were successful and Sakharov became something of a national hero. It is here that Sakharov's life began to change.

He was provided almost unheard of access to the Soviet leadership. He had direct phone lines to the Kremlin. Gradually, Lourie shows Sakharov repeatedly refusing membership in the Communist Party. He also began taking up the causes of his fellow scientists who were treated unfairly by the apparatchiks that dominated all areas of life. He didn't hesitate to pick up the phone and complain to Khrushchev

As Sakharov grew increasingly distanced from the Soviet regime, the regime grew increasingly intolerant of Sakharov's actions. Sakharov's dissidence evolved from one focusing on small issues to issues of internal democracy and global peace. It is clear that if Sakharov did not possess a vast array of nuclear secrets he would have been subject to the exile in the same manner as Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Voinovich. At the same time, Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Price. The Soviet authorities were as put off by this award as the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Boris Pasternak. The authorities finally did exile, but to the closed city of Gorky. There he was harassed and harried on a daily basis.

It should be pointed out that Sakharov became famous throughout the world for his dissident activities. However, Lourie's examination of Sakharov focuses almost exclusively on Sakharov from an internal, domestic view point. I believe this was a wise choice as the West actually knew very little of what Sakharov actually was going through during those years.

Lourie's Sakharov is not an exercise in pure idolatry however. Lourie does not fail to note the lack of warmth, in fact the animosity, between Sakharov and his children from his first marriage (his first wife died after over 20 years of marriage) once he met and married Elena Bonner.

Sakharov was, of course, a scientist and Lourie had to address certain scientific concepts and issues throughout the course of the book. His treatment was precise yet understandable to the lay reader.

Lourie's writing is precise and to the point. He lets Sakharov's actions speak for themselves and does not engage in an excessive amount of self-indulgent psycho-analysis of Sakharov. Lourie treats his readers as adults and he allows the reader the opportunity to read the story of Sakharov's life in a manner that allows us to ponder exactly how any man can become a twig that changes the course of history.

This is a book worth reading.

Absolutely First-Rate.......2004-02-25

This is a superb book that takes the reader through all of the major episodes in Sakharov's life while adding enough personal details (i.e., why Sakharov fried his salad) to make the man human. Sakharov was one of the key figures of the last half of the twentieth century and this book may stand as the authoriative work on the man both as a physicist and as a dissident. The book is surprisingly easy to read and is an excellent introduction to the Soviet system under Brezhnev for the novice. The book also goes over some of Sakharov's main writings, which in retrospect seem a bit off the wall.

Excellent book.......2002-07-23

Sakharov was the father of the Russian atomic program; he was Oppenheimer, Teller, and Feynman, all rolled into one. The book traces Russia from before his birth to his death, as it rises against Germany and sinks into the depths of Stalin's Terror and Kuruschev's reign. Sakharov, given immense importance under Stalin and Kuruschev, finds himself at odd with what he created. He wants so much to redeem himself that he devotes the remaining of his life to the Russian resistance. And he suffers for this - all the perks and medals he earned for his work on Russia's atomic program are summarily taken back by the state. He is exiled to Gorky and is spied on by KGB. His memoirs are stolen on two occassions by the KGB; depressed, almost suicidal, he rewrites them from memory. This was an excellent look into a very interesting country in the context of an equally interesting protagonist. It is said that mathematicians (and probably theoritical physicists) have a short career; their inventions and discoveries are made when they are young, and they whittle away in their middle- and old ages. Could be that Sakharov, having contributed to many such inventions and discoveries, figured that joining the resistance is a far better legacy. Being considered the father of the atomic program of a country is a big burden to bear; I am reminded of Oppenheimer's words when he witnessed what he had created. All he could think about was Lord Krishna's words in the Bhagavad Gita: "I am death, shatterer of worlds, annhilating all things." I would recommend this book for a great insight into Russia through the eyes of one of its best known (and loved) citizens.

I'm just reporting on the political parts.......2002-07-12

I read this book slowly. The author has gathered a lot of details and his interest in Russia is the main context in which the subject is considered. With the emphasis in this book on how extraordinary the Communist regime of the Soviet Union had been in ruthlessness even before it had the opportunity to acquire atomic weapons, I was afraid that its approach to what I was really interested in would be too tame and toothless for my taste. More than most nuclear scientists, Andrei Sakharov has been recognized as a great dissident. Many thought that this was some kind of folly. "In a joke of the time a dog explains glasnost: `The chain is longer, the food is still far away, but you can bark all you want.'" (p. 373). Jokes were a major feature of the situation. There is a paragraph early in the book, about a mannerism of a great Russian poet, who announced his appreciation for the best of his own work with the words, "`O Pushkin, you . . . !' At moments of insight, rubbing his hands in delight, Sakharov would repeat those words aloud." (p. 48) The big joke about Pushkin was most appropriate a hundred years after his death, after the official Pushkin Year of 1937, when a few people still had the nerve to say: "If Pushkin had lived in our times, he still would have died in '37." (p. 46). Sakharov grew up in tough times, but his sense of reality grew in proportion to the responsibilities which he assumed. When he was picked on in a personal manner, and he felt that the Soviet system reacted in a way that seemed inappropriate to him personally, he was capable of exhibiting his own toughness. When Tatiana, Bonner's daughter, was expelled from Moscow University, he was capable of losing the restraint with which people are expected to submit to those who sit in positions of authority. Poor Ivan Petrovsky, rector of Moscow University. "Sakharov lost his temper and pounded the table twice with his fist. Later that day Petrovsky dropped dead from a heart attack, and in some quarters, including the Academy, Sakharov was considered complicit in Petrovsky's death." (p. 248). Joseph Shklovsky, author of FIVE BILLION VODKA BOTTLES TO THE MOON, considered himself a leader "because of his mastery of cursing, an art he had learned as a construction foreman." (p. 59). Reporting on a month which Sakharov and Shklovsky spent on a train fleeing Moscow as students during World War II, Shklovsky reported, "One day he asked me a preposterous favor: `Do you have anything I can read on physics?' . . . My first impulse was to send this mama's boy and his ridiculous request straight to hell." (p. 59). Years later, concerning Petrovsky, Shklovsky said, "I can't forgive Andrei Sakharov for the sharp rebuke he delivered to the poor rector." (p. 248).

Since Sakharov was seeking convergence with the rest of the world more than anything else, it made sense for him to go see everyone "From Margaret Thatcher to Daniel Ellsberg" (p. 360) when he had the chance. He even "had half an hour alone with Edward Teller before a formal banquet honoring Teller on his birthday." (p. 375) Later he convinced Solzhenitsyn's wife to call Solzhenitsyn to a phone in Cavendish, Vermont so that "there should be nothing left unsaid between us." (p. 376). With Elena, he met "both the head of the Italian Socialist Party and the pope. And, in an event that captures the flavor of that year of wonders, Sakharov and the pope discussed perestroika in the Vatican." (p. 379).

He finally met Gorbachev on January 15, 1988, (p. 366) and the two found themselves in an interesting political situation. After elections on March 26, 1989, Sakharov was to represent the Academy of Sciences in the First Congress of People's Deputies on May 25. "Yeltsin won Sakharov's admiration when he demanded live television coverage of the congress." (p. 381). Gorbachev had a committee to draft a new constitution approved "when someone noticed all its members were communists." (p. 384). Sakharov was added to the committee and became the major opponent of Article 6 of the constitution, which gave the Communist Party a monopoly on power. Open debate was new to those who had been involved in officially secret proceedings, and Sakharov found himself involved in arguments in which Gorbachev said, "I'm against running around like a chicken with its head cut off." (p. 385). When the fight turned to Afghanistan, Sakharov had said things which rankled the usual superpower thinking on the Soviet side, and continued to insist, "The real issue is that the war in Afghanistan was itself a crime, an illegal adventure, and we don't know who was responsible for it." (p. 386). There were shouts in opposition to his views, but polls for the best deputy "showed Sakharov number one, Yeltsin two, and Gorbachev seventeenth." (p. 386). When he died, a "crowd of fifty thousand" came to his funeral. (p. 401).

The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist's Path to Freedom
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The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist's Path to Freedom
Gennady Gorelik , and Antonina W. Bouis
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Sakharov: A Biography

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ASIN: 019515620X

Book Description

How did Andrei Sakharov, a theoretical physicist and the acknowledged father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, become a human rights activist and the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize? In his later years, Sakharov noted in his diary that he was "simply a man with an unusual fate." To understand this deceptively straightforward statement by an extraordinary man, The World of Andrei Sakharov, the first authoritative study of Andrei Sakharov as a scientist as well as a public figure, relies on previously inaccessible documents, recently declassified archives, and personal accounts by Sakharov's friends and colleagues to examine the real context of Sakharov's life. In the course of doing so, Gennady Gorelik answers a fascinating question, whether the Soviet hydrogen bomb was really fathered by Sakharov, or whether it was based on stolen American secrets. Gorelik concludes that while espionage did initiate the Soviet effort, the Russian hydrogen bomb was invented independently. Gorelik also elucidates the reasons that brought about the seemingly sudden transformation of the top-secret physicist into a public figure in 1968, when Sakharov's famous essay "Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom" was distributed in samizdat in the USSR and smuggled out to the West. Recently declassified documents show that Sakharov's metamorphosis was caused by professional concerns, particularly regarding the development of an anti-ballistic missile defense. An insider's view of how the upper echelons of the Soviet regime functioned had led Sakharov to the conclusion that the goals of peace, progress, and human rights were inextricably linked. His free thinking and free feeling were manifested in his hope that scientific thought and religious perception would find a profound synthesis in the future.

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Aleksandr I
Andrei Nikolaevich Sakharov
Manufacturer: Nauka
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 5020094986

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Russia in the past
Fascinating Autobiography By Wife of Andrei Sakharov

Alone Together
Elena Bonner
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

Russia in the past.......2007-01-12

The book is by the wife of the famous physicist, Sakharov, translated from Russian. It is a little disjointed, as it comprises of anecdotes, and documents their fight with Authority for free speech. A sad story too. I recently (Jun 2006) visited Russia for 30 days; a facinating place, friendly people, and not the Russia of this book. Recommended if you want to understand the history of that country.

Fascinating Autobiography By Wife of Andrei Sakharov.......1999-06-16

This book was written in a rather choppy manner, but I still loved it. Elena Bonner talks about her life in Russia with her husband physicist Andrei Sakharov (developer of the H bomb) and all the hardships they had to endure at the hands of their government, about her visits to the US in order to obtain special medical care and her impressions of this country, as well as the ongoing campaigning of she and her husband for world peace. Bonner is sweet, dignified and yet candid, strong and intelligent. Definitely worth reading.

Galileo's Children: Science, Sakharov, and the Power of the State

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Galileo's Children: Science, Sakharov, and the Power of the State
George Bailey
Manufacturer: Arcade Pub
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1559700785

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The Making of Andrei Sakharov
George Bailey
Manufacturer: Allen Lane
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0713990333

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Political ideas, not really solutions

Moscow And Beyond, 1986 To 1989
Andrei D. Sakharov
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Political ideas, not really solutions.......2002-10-24

This book was written before a gigantic economic collapse wiped out the savings of people in the Soviet Union who were hardly prosperous, but were highly aware that the rest of the world was leaving them behind in the quest for material comforts. At the time, "Wages represent only 37-38 percent of our gross national product--for the rest of the developed world that figure is 70 percent and over." (p. 142). Parallels with present problems that continue to bother people who consider continuous progress an economic necessity of the first order might occur to any reader who is willing to think that the design of thermonuclear devices, for which the author, Andrei Sakharov, is famous, might be trivial compared to the kind of chain reactions which monetary policy produces. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a main character in this book, and Sakharov's attempt to tell him what needed to be done on June 1, 1989, reflects how rigidly the old system clung to "achievement of unlimited personal power." (p. 133) This book suggested Sakharov's solution: "In brief, economic reform is practicable only if there are changes in the character of ownership in agriculture and industry, if the Party's and state's stranglehold on power is ended and if the highway robbery practiced by the central committees is eliminated." (p. 130).

Global capitalism is not what it used to be. Those who have taken control have pushed the envelope of subjugation and economic strangulation so far that it is difficult to refute the idea that the west supported the looting of the public assets in the former Soviet Union with the observation that those who were previously capable of highway robbery merely found an economic method for maintaining this power, as well as greatly increasing their wealth.

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