{"id":4555,"date":"2021-05-23T19:49:48","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T19:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/?p=4555"},"modified":"2021-05-23T19:49:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T19:49:48","slug":"agent-sonya-by-ben-macintyre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/agent-sonya-by-ben-macintyre\/","title":{"rendered":"<b>Agent Sonya<\/b> by Ben Macintyre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/52578861-agent-sonya\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1585320220l\/52578861._SX98_.jpg\" alt=\"Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/52578861-agent-sonya\">Agent Sonya: Moscow&#8217;s Most Daring Wartime Spy<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/32137.Ben_Macintyre\">Ben Macintyre<\/a><br \/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/4017441374\">5 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sonya was the code name given by the GRU (Russian military intelligence) to Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jewess from a leftist\/communist family. She was raised in Germany by well-educated and respected intellectuals in a rather privileged society. She thoroughly adopted Communist ideology and moved to China before WWII to help the Communists there resist the Nationalist (Kuomintang) government. There she was recruited by Richard Sorge, one of Russia&#8217;s most celebrated spies. She later served in Manchuria, Switzerland, and England, and underwent training in Russia as well. She turned out to have been one of Russia&#8217;s best spies throughout the Cold War. I don&#8217;t want to spoil it by giving more detail.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m no fan of history, especially political history, and I expected this to be a burdensome read for my book club, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It&#8217;s not weighed down with excessive biographic detail or wartime battle history. It&#8217;s a cracking good read and full of action throughout. People who enjoy spy tradecraft will love it. It&#8217;s astounding how she could have been (and was) overlooked and dismissed as a spy by Nazis and Swiss and English counterintelligence time and again. She also had quite a sexual history. She must have had quite a body from the various descriptions made of her. The author knows how to write, not just research, a story.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/12975428-russell-atkinson\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agent Sonya: Moscow&#8217;s Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben Macintyre My rating: 5 of 5 stars Sonya was the code name given by the GRU (Russian military intelligence) to Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jewess from a leftist\/communist family. She was raised in Germany by well-educated and respected intellectuals in a rather privileged society. She thoroughly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre - OnWords<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/agent-sonya-by-ben-macintyre\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre - OnWords\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Agent Sonya: Moscow&#8217;s Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben Macintyre My rating: 5 of 5 stars Sonya was the code name given by the GRU (Russian military intelligence) to Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jewess from a leftist\/communist family. 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