The main character is Thomas Kell, who has appeared before in the author's A Foreign Country and is an experienced and well regarded but tainted SIS senior operative, who is languishing outside the service on unpaid leave and trying to find a return route to his profession after some adventures in the aforementioned book. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to questions from a live audience and those submitted by text, electronic mail, telephone, and… In the Bloomberg interview Katusa revealed he manages a Canadian Hedge Fund; he’s involved in shale oil, copper and uranium; so his money in “on the line”. Levane, has noticed a curious pattern of blown spy missions involving England and the cousins. A nuclear scientist in Iran and other operations have been blown. Levane suspects a mole, and we are soon immershed in a classic cat and mouse game as Kell tries to find the mole. Levane has a list of suspects and Kell is to focus on one such agent.

The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought about the collapse of the authoritarian communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia, marking the beginning of the country’s journey towards democracy. Velvet Revolutionsexamines the values of everyday citizens who lived under so-called real socialism, as well as how their values changed after the 1989 collapse. Worst of all, a lot of the writing is simply weak. Here is just one brief glaring example: the last paragraph of the chapter on JFK (“Kennedy’s Contingencies”) starts out “Were the Berlin and Cuban crises Cold War watersheds? Some say they were:”. Who says so? Why no footnotes to related scholarship? Why is the rest of the paragraph so vague (and again, without footnotes)? The last sentence asserts “During Kennedy’s time in office, the Cold War was becoming truly global, and the burdens it put on the material and mental resources of its main protagonists increased relentlessly”, after little supporting argument for these points during the preceding chapter. It’s not that the assertion is wrong, it’s just made in a way that doesn’t convince. There are also innumerable awkward turns of phrase, such as “mental resources” here, a sign the book needed much tighter proofreading and editing. The overall effect of this vague and awkward style does not completely cloud the overall meaning, but it does greatly reduce the reader’s enjoyment, turning a long historical journey into a slog.Again, it reminds us that energy is at the heart of civilizations' existence and progress in every aspect of our lives. My only criticism is the last chapter. It did not stand up to the expectations of an excellent book. It deserved a better ending. Still, I would recommend this book anyway. Not simply for its ambitious scholarship and accessible style, but also because of the way it presents a highly polarised epoch in relatively balanced terms, treating the motivations, attitudes, and behaviours of all sides with respect.

For those who lived through the Cold War or, like me, became adults during the tail end of it, Odd Arne Westad's book is a reminder of a different era.

https://ximage.c-spanvideo.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJwaWN0dXJlcy5jLXNwYW52aWRlby5vcmciLCJrZXkiOiJGaWxlc1wvN2E0XC8yMDE0MTIwNzAwMTkzOTAwMl9oZC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsiZml0IjoiY292ZXIiLCJoZWlnaHQiOjUwNn19fQ== Marin Katusa talked about his book, The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America’s Grasp, in which he argues that Vladimir Putin’s dream is to restore Russia’s past glory by dominating the world’s energy supply. Mr. Katusa said that if Putin achieved this goal, the U.S. and other G-7 countries would find themselves playing second fiddle, economically, to countries like Russia, Brazil, India, and China. If you are not familiar with the nuances of how the Global Energy trade works and how America defined its supremacy over the world, grab this book and you will learn it in one go.