Bridge of spies
Subtitle: a true story of the Cold War
By: Giles Whittell
Edition: First paperback edition.
Publisher: Broadway Paperbacks
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780767931083; 9780307719980; 9780767931076
Subjects: Intelligence service; Cold War (1945-1989) cct; Cold War; History
Description: Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange between East and West? Bridge of Spies traces the paths to that exchange on February 10, 1962. It is the story of three men -- William Fisher, alias Rudolf Abel, a British born KGB agent arrested by the FBI in New York City and jailed as a Soviet superspy for trying to steal America's most precious nuclear secrets; Gary Powers, the American U-2 pilot who was captured when his plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over the closed cities of central Russia; and Frederic Pryor, a young American graduate student in Berlin mistakenly identified as a spy, arrested and held without charge by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. By weaving the three strands of this story together, Giles Whittell portrays the intense political tensions and nuclear brinkmanship that brought the United States and Soviet Union so close to a hot war in the early 1960s. Drawing on new interviews conducted in the United States, Europe, and Russia with key players in the exchange and the events leading to it, among them Frederic Pryor himself and the man who shot down Gary Powers, Bridge of Spies captures a time when the fate of the world really did depend on coded messages on microdots and brave young men in pressure suits.
Notes: "Originally published in hardcover ... by Broadway Books ... in 2010"--Title page verso.

Adapted into a Steven Spielberg film of the same title in 2015.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-262) and index.
Table of contents: title: The waterspout; title: The agent; title: The pilot; title: The innocent; title: Stakeout; title: American justice; title: Falling from a long way up; title: City of cowboys and Indians; title: A first-class panic; title: Soviet justice; title: The man in the scarlet sports car; title: Poker for table stakes; title: Three men and a bridge.