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Atomic Spy
- The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's summary
"Nancy Greenspan dives into the mysteries of the Klaus Fuchs espionage case and emerges with a classic Cold War biography of intrigue and torn loyalties. Atomic Spy is a mesmerizing morality tale, told with fresh sources and empathy." (Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy and coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer)
"Enthralling and riveting." (The New York Times Book Review)
The gripping biography of a notorious Cold War villain - the German-born British scientist who handed the Soviets top-secret American plans for the plutonium bomb - showing a man torn between conventional loyalties and a sense of obligation to a greater good.
German by birth, British by naturalization, Communist by conviction, Klaus Fuchs was a fearless Nazi resister, a brilliant scientist, and an infamous spy. He was convicted of espionage by Britain in 1950 for handing over the designs of the plutonium bomb to the Russians, and has gone down in history as one of the most dangerous agents in American and British history. He put an end to America's nuclear hegemony and single-handedly heated up the Cold War. But, was Klaus Fuchs really evil?
Using archives long hidden in Germany as well as intimate family correspondence, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan brings into sharp focus the moral and political ambiguity of the times in which Fuchs lived and the ideals with which he struggled. As a university student in Germany, he stood up to Nazi terror without flinching and joined the Communists largely because they were the only ones resisting the Nazis. After escaping to Britain in 1933, he was arrested as a German émigré - an "enemy alien" - in 1940 and sent to an internment camp in Canada. His mentor at university, renowned physicist Max Born, worked to facilitate his release. After years of struggle and ideological conflict, when Fuchs joined the atomic bomb project, his loyalties were firmly split. He started handing over top secret research to the Soviets in 1941, and continued for years from deep within the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Greenspan's insights into his motivations make us realize how he was driven not just by his Communist convictions but seemingly by a dedication to peace, seeking to level the playing field of the world powers.
With thrilling detail from never-before-seen sources, Atomic Spy travels across the Germany of an ascendant Nazi party; the British university classroom of Max Born; a British internment camp in Canada; the secret laboratories of Los Alamos; and Eastern Germany at the height of the Cold War. Atomic Spy shows the real Klaus Fuchs - who he was, what he did, why he did it, and how he was caught. His extraordinary life is a cautionary tale about the ambiguity of morality and loyalty, as pertinent today as in the 1940s.
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Critic reviews
“Nancy Greenspan dives into the mysteries of the Klaus Fuchs espionage case and emerges with a classic Cold War biography of intrigue and torn loyalties. Atomic Spy is a mesmerizing morality tale, told with fresh sources and empathy.” (Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames and coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer)
“Greenspan sheds new light on the character, family, and motives of the notorious spy who gave the Soviet Union a blueprint for the atomic bomb. Klaus Fuchs’s espionage and its consequences raise timely questions about blind devotion to an ideology.” (Cynthia C. Kelly, president, Atomic Heritage Foundation)
“A riveting read. Greenspan skillfully and with nuance describes how one of the Manhattan Project’s prominent physicists, led to Communism by early struggles against Nazism, eventually became a important spy for the Russians. A tale of intrigue, competing moralities and human fallibility.” (Gino Segrè, author of The Pope of Physics and Ordinary Geniuses)
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In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her. They didn’t know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn’t know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe.
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Wanted to love it
- By Robert Bell on 09-30-20
By: Ben Macintyre
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The Compatriots
- The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad
- By: Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late 19th century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB - and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world.
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Great book. Extremely detailed history of the USSR
- By M. Gordon on 03-03-20
By: Andrei Soldatov, and others
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Do Not Disturb
- The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad
- By: Michela Wrong
- Narrated by: Michela Wrong
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister.
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What is true and what isn't?
- By Buretto on 11-30-21
By: Michela Wrong
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From Warsaw with Love
- Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance
- By: John Pomfret
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the award-winning and acclaimed author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, From Warsaw with Love tells the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War. In 1990, soon after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Polish government sent a veteran spy, who’d battled the West for decades, to rescue six American officers trapped in Baghdad.
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Fascinating and well researched
- By wacek szymkowiak on 07-23-24
By: John Pomfret
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Spies in the Family
- An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War
- By: Eva Dillon
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s.
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LOVED it!
- By SaraofDI on 11-06-17
By: Eva Dillon
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The Rebel and the Kingdom
- The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime
- By: Bradley Hope
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the early 2000s, Adrian Hong was a soft-spoken Yale undergraduate looking for his place in the world. After reading a harrowing account of life inside North Korea, he realized he had found a cause so pressing that he was ready to devote his life to it. Hong journeyed to China, outwitting Chinese security services as he helped ferry asylum-seeking North Korean escapees to safety. The Rebel and the Kingdom is an exhilarating account of a man who turns his back on the status quo—to instead live boldly by his principles.
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Phenomenal true story
- By NYCdogmomma on 11-13-22
By: Bradley Hope
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All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
- The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
- By: Rebecca Donner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Donner
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.
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Riveting narrative non fiction
- By Sarah Q on 10-22-21
By: Rebecca Donner
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The Grey Men
- Pursuing the Stasi into the Present
- By: Ralph Hope
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
By 1990, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. During 40 years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Overnight, almost 100,000 Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed. This is the story of what they did next.
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Very Enlightening
- By Katy on 07-09-22
By: Ralph Hope
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The Quiet Americans
- Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - a Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Scott Anderson
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear—to some—that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA. Chronicling their fascinating lives, Scott Anderson follows the exploits of four spies. Despite their ambitions, time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by ham-fisted politicking and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government.
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A Tragedy for One
- By Amazon Customer on 09-23-20
By: Scott Anderson
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The Man with the Poison Gun
- A Cold War Spy Story
- By: Serhii Plokhy
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the fall of 1961, KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky defected to West Germany. After spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinsky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case of the entire Cold War. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders.
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Long…but excellent
- By Shawna Hanley on 10-16-23
By: Serhii Plokhy
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The Ghost
- The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton's dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency's MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew.
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Flawed Superpatriot
- By Bubblehog on 11-23-17
By: Jefferson Morley
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White Malice
- The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa
- By: Susan Williams
- Narrated by: Chanté McCormick
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In White Malice, Susan Williams unearths the covert operations pursued by the CIA from Ghana to the Congo to the UN in an effort to frustrate and deny Africa’s new generation of nationalist leaders. This dramatically upends the conventional belief that the African nations failed to establish effective, democratic states on their own accord. As the old European powers moved out, the US moved in.
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A very good read.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-20-22
By: Susan Williams
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The Good Spy
- The Life and Death of Robert Ames
- By: Kai Bird
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history - a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West. On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East - CIA operative Robert Ames.
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Biased but interesting
- By Peggy on 05-09-18
By: Kai Bird
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Say Nothing
- A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Matthew Blaney
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
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On a par with I'll Be Gone in the Dark, plus...
- By Grace O'Malley on 03-01-19
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Spymaster
- Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief
- By: Tennent H. Bagley
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he “handled” American and British defectors, recruited Western operatives as double agents, served as a ranking officer at the East Berlin and Vienna KGB bureaus, and tackled special assignments from the Kremlin.
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An brilliant personal Cold War perspective
- By Iamnotaspy on 01-09-15
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Launched in the 1880s by the first baron, the Empain industrial empire spread from Belgium and France to span more than a dozen countries. When Baron Édouard-Jean “Wado” Empain took over, he further expanded the company, became a key player in France’s nuclear sector, and, by the mid-1970s, was one of the country’s most powerful business leaders - a self-described “master of the universe”. Wado’s vertiginous rise caught the eye of Alain Cailloll, a small-time gangster who had grown up in a wealthy family before embracing a life of crime.
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Mussolini's Daughter
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Edda Mussolini was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s oldest and favorite child. At 19, she was married to Count Galleazzo Ciano, Il Duce’s Minister for Foreign Affairs during the 1930s, the most turbulent decade in Italy’s fascist history. In the years preceding World War II, Edda ruled over Italy’s aristocratic families and the cultured and middle classes while selling Fascism on the international stage. How a young woman wielded such control is the heart of Moorehead’s fascinating history.
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The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
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The Happy Bottom Riding Club
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Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and outmaneuvered the US government. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend.
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Never a dull moment
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Battle of Ink and Ice
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In the fall of 1909, a pair of bitter contests captured the world’s attention. The American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed to have discovered the North Pole, sparking a vicious feud that was unprecedented in international scientific and geographic circles. At the same time, the rivalry between two powerful New York City newspapers—the storied Herald and the ascendant Times—fanned the flames of the so-called polar controversy, as each paper financially and reputationally committed itself to an opposing explorer and fought desperately to defend him.
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Entangled History
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By: Darrell Hartman
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Time's Echo
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In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller’s words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, “the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.”
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Beautiful
- By Chuck Millar, PhD on 05-18-24
By: Jeremy Eichler
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Mad Enchantment
- Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world and are among the most beloved works of art of the past century. Yet, ironically, these soothing images were created amid terrible personal turmoil and sadness.
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Wonderful book. Awful awful narration.
- By StphnyC on 06-23-17
By: Ross King
What listeners say about Atomic Spy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- BG
- 02-12-24
Fuchs character however misguided it was because he was unaware of the true nature stalin’s russia.
I thought the narrator had an emotional demeanor inappropriate for the subject matter of the book
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- Rick B
- 06-07-20
Understanding the Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs.
This is an amazing story. The book is written with precision and empathy. This story is about the entire life of Klaus and his family. It's a tragic life filled with so many broken pieces that have molded the man and his life choices. I highly recommend this book and the narrator Tavia Gilbert does an excellent read to the listener. You may like me, listen to it more than once to fully appreciate it. I have learned and can begin to understand why and how Klaus became a spy. Before listening to his story, you would probably believe that there should be no reason to forgive him for what he did being an Atomic Spy. When you finish the book, you will understand his choices.
Klaus grew up in a time when German & Russian political challenges were splitting his home land of Germany. The Nazi party was gaining power and the only solution Klaus could imagine was the Socialist or Communist party of Germany. Klaus like so many refugees fleeing Hitler's rein, is eventually sent to Canada along with captured German, Jewish & Russian POW's. Klaus eventually returns to England to become a citizen and complete his education a PHD in Physics. Working for the English, Klaus makes his way to America. First to New York & later to Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project, on the Atomic bomb. I will stop here. I don't think you will be disappointed in this book, or the author. I am looking for other books now by Nancy Throndike Greenspan and others read by Tavia Gilbert. This is true history that you don't have to challenge it's authenticity. This is 5 stars all the way for me.
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- George Bettasso
- 08-24-24
Atomic spy
Very good well informed book. About espionage on the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project. That influenced the Cold War.
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- Irvin L
- 08-29-24
Still a Traitor
No matter how much the tale tried to show his character, in all truth he was still a traitor and should have suffered the consequences.
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- Eila
- 08-10-21
Excellent profile
Overall, the book is a very strong profile of Klaus Fuchs. I would say that the meat of the book could have been edited down a bit (feels repetitive at times), and the author could have put more into the epilogue or final chapters that speculate Klaus' state of mind and motivations. Overall, great book for anyone interested in the history of the Manhattan Project, WWII, or the development of Atomic Weapons/Cold War arms race.
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- Spicy disaster
- 06-11-23
Balanced perspective on a controversial person and confusing time in world politics
This often misunderstood character, that is demonized through the lens of western political theory. This book seeks to provide a balance without playing into this bias. This is a must read for any study of contemporary geopolitics.
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- Lowell
- 08-09-20
One of the best books I have read
I am an 92 yr old retired medical scientist. I have lived thru Klaus Fuchs and his life as a traitor to the US. Nancy Greenspan’s book is amazing for its detailed description of what happened and why. I feel she did amazing research to bring to the reader this amazing man and this amazing book!
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1 person found this helpful
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- R. Stern
- 10-27-21
Would Be OK As A Short Story
The details are overwhelmingly boring; however, the motivation and character of the subject are interesting.
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1 person found this helpful
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- anonymous
- 11-24-20
Morally revolting -- a player in mass murder cast as a saint
The truth goes down the Orwellian memory-hole in this whitewash of the murder regime Fuchs worshipped like a twisted insane religion.
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5 people found this helpful