The Moscow Rules - BookWyrm

Pentapod reviewed The Moscow Rules by Antonio J. Mendez

Review of 'The Moscow Rules' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I picked up this book from the library after hearing an interview with one of the authors on NPR. I was mostly interested in the aspects talking about how Hollywood special effects and magic tricks where integrated into CIA disguise repertoire. As such, there were several chapters that were quite interesting and talked about how certain devices or costume changes were planned out, although I would’ve liked more specific details. In terms of actual politics or spycraft however all the information in this book is pretty old of course. If that’s an area that interests you there’s probably not much new here although it seems like a good summary for someone new to the topic. I found it interesting how large the overlap was between Hollywood and the CIA. Overall it’s a pretty quick read and pretty shallow overview of the history of the time, so YMMV depending what you’re …

I picked up this book from the library after hearing an interview with one of the authors on NPR. I was mostly interested in the aspects talking about how Hollywood special effects and magic tricks where integrated into CIA disguise repertoire. As such, there were several chapters that were quite interesting and talked about how certain devices or costume changes were planned out, although I would’ve liked more specific details. In terms of actual politics or spycraft however all the information in this book is pretty old of course. If that’s an area that interests you there’s probably not much new here although it seems like a good summary for someone new to the topic. I found it interesting how large the overlap was between Hollywood and the CIA. Overall it’s a pretty quick read and pretty shallow overview of the history of the time, so YMMV depending what you’re interested in.

Nerd Picnic reviewed The Moscow Rules by Antonio J. Mendez

Review of 'The Moscow Rules' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Fun enough for the nuts and bolts of espionage, disguise, and misdirection in Moscow in the '70s and '80s. Light reading about cool tradecraft.

It's not a memoir, and it doesn't really present an argument, other than that the CIA employed some extremely clever people (which no one would dispute).

The Mendezes are fascinating people and knew the Agency thoroughly from their decades of loyal service. But for that same reason, there's no critical or outsider perspective; very few connections are drawn to shifting world politics, or the arms race, or the influence of Reagan.

Even if they wanted to keep the focus narrowly on espionage tactics vs. the KGB - why not then include some material from or about the KGB side, available post-Cold War? How did the other side perceive what was going on? What were their strengths and weaknesses? (Based on the book, you would think that …

Fun enough for the nuts and bolts of espionage, disguise, and misdirection in Moscow in the '70s and '80s. Light reading about cool tradecraft.

It's not a memoir, and it doesn't really present an argument, other than that the CIA employed some extremely clever people (which no one would dispute).

The Mendezes are fascinating people and knew the Agency thoroughly from their decades of loyal service. But for that same reason, there's no critical or outsider perspective; very few connections are drawn to shifting world politics, or the arms race, or the influence of Reagan.

Even if they wanted to keep the focus narrowly on espionage tactics vs. the KGB - why not then include some material from or about the KGB side, available post-Cold War? How did the other side perceive what was going on? What were their strengths and weaknesses? (Based on the book, you would think that the infamous and horribly effective KGB somehow never figured out anything except what American traitors told them.) Among the dozens of sources in the bibliography, I saw only three that were primarily about the Soviets - pretty strange for a book that is primarily set in Moscow.

Tom Newman reviewed The Moscow Rules by Antonio J. Mendez

Review of 'The Moscow Rules' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Good book, with interesting details about the technology and techniques used by the CIA. However many of the stories have been told before. The authors own book The Master of Disguse includes many of them. The book Billion Dollar Spy is a more detailed telling of the same assets and the agents who worked with them.