This is an account of the collection of two men, one with the CIA and one with KGB. They could've been the best of friends, or maybe even lovers. But the writing style made them come off as unlikable and insufferable, even though we were supposed to like them and root for them.

What happens when a spin doctor and a J.F.K. assassination researcher write a book about espionage? They do a good job of course. The story of two misfits within their own organizations, one Jack Platt of the C.I.A. and Gennady Vasilenko of the K.G.B. both stationed in Washington D.C. in 1978 make an unlikely friendship based very much on being iconoclasts in a drab world. Read this improbable tale spanning decades of what can only be termed friendship.

Russo and Dezenhall's Best of Enemies is an amazing account of the development of Cold War spying and what life was like for those based in the USSR, what life was like for Russian agents based in the U.S., how each nation developed (or in most cases failed to) assets from the other side as well as spectacular failures of U.S. intelligence agencies such as Ames, Hanssen and others. Best of Enemies is also a goldmine of information on the USSR and Russia after the breakup of the USSR up to and including to some extent the Putin regime. It is like having a backstage pass to the greatest show on earth -- U.S. vs. USSR. And, the best thing is that the writing is not dry nor so overly factual.. There is a coherent thread that has a narrative feel that is employed by the best thriller writers to keep the pace up. Although there are a lot of individuals and organizations mentioned, the authors include a list at the beginning of the book and develop the narrative thread around four or five individuals primarily.

My thanks to NetGalley and Twelve books for an advanced copy of this espionage book.

A story of friendship over country and duty, Best of Enemies:The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War by Gus Russo and Eric Dezenhall tells of two intelligence agents from different sides of the Cold War who bot attempt to recruit the other, fail, and instead of assets they become comrades. The story is interesting but told in an odd style, very boy's own as the British would say, oddly Reagan-esque Men's Adventurish in American. The agents are men's men, drinking, shooting, lying, and with a hint of Hollywood. Robert DeNiro is listed fourth in the dramatis personae. Not a Ballantine Espionage/Intelligence Library book, more a Nicholas Pileggi, Peter Maas kind of story.

A true spy story rivaling even one of my favorite stories about the Cold War, this book is great. % stars for a tale spanning decades of some CIA personal and a KGB officer who became friends.

An extremely powerful novel about spy’s during the Cold War. The story was riveting and I did not want to put it down. A very inspirational story about an unlikely friendship that endured all troubles. A must read book.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Sometimes is amazes me that people go to such extents to maintain and grow their friendship irrespective of how it complicates their lives and lives of people around them. The book starts slowly but once you are in the groove, the storyline grips you.

Story is about two agents, one from CIA & other from KGB who are entrusted with a job to persuade the other one into betraying their respective countries. However, they end up becoming best friends and protect their friendship against all odds. The book tells the intricate inside working of CIA & KGB and beautifully shows how these agencies conduct international espionage.

Sometimes is amazes me that people go to such extents to maintain and grow their friendship irrespective of how it complicates their lives and lives of people around them. The book starts slowly but once you are in the groove, the storyline grips you.

Story is about two agents, one from CIA & other from KGB who are entrusted with a job to persuade the other one into betraying their respective countries. However, they end up becoming best friends and protect their friendship against all odds. The book tells the intricate inside working of CIA & KGB and beautifully shows how these agencies conduct international espionage.

The thrilling story of two Cold War spies, CIA case officer Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko -- improbable friends at a time when they should have been anything but.


Two dedicated agents of opposing counter-intelligence agencies who become friends - a buddy story. Whilst obviously written for the mass market, I found this to be a conflicting read for me. I was interested to know how the two men - Jack Platt and Gennady Vasilenko - managed to become close friends, and yet both men come off as arrogant, self-absorbed, renegades, whose respective agencies seemingly put up with despite going totally against the grain, that I felt no empathy with either of them.

For me, the striking thing to come out of all of this was how one-sided this friendship seemed to be. Valisenko seems to be taking all the risks and makes all the overtures (after Platt's initial contact), and appears to have come out of it all extremely worse for wear - used even by Platt.

There's a lot of school boy hi-jinks and very little espionage - except for the revealing of two spies, but by this stage both men were actually no longer members of their respective agencies but still, somehow, managed to stay in the game.

The more I read this book, the more I wanted to slap Vasilenko across the head with it or throw it at Platt that is how much both men infuriated me. Either that, or it was the writing style of both authors that failed to convey any sense the personal to attract me to wanting to know more of their stories beyond what was written here.

If you are interested in this genre, you will no doubt pick it up and read at some stage.

Well written and organized in a manner to tell the story with great flow and chronilogical. Details are included and add to the story as there are not too many and not too few.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC copy of the book. The opinions expressed above are my own.

If you enjoy the television show The Americans, the Jason Bourne movies or grew up reading John LeCarre or Robert Ludlum, you’ll likely enjoy Best of Enemies. The same goes for those interested in Cold War history in general.

The book is well-paced and intriguing. There is plenty of detail regarding people, places, and tradecraft. It’s interesting to see what was going on behind the scenes over those many years.

My only recommendation to readers is to bookmark the character bios at the front of the book for reference. It’s easy to get lost and you may find yourself flipping back and forth.

The thing I liked most about "Best of Enemies" is that I was alive and traveling the world while all of this spy stuff was going on. If, when I was younger I had made different choices, perhaps I could have been one of these guys, creating traitors, stalking traitors, smuggling secrets in small packages.

As a committed peacenik, at a fundamental level I think all of this skullduggery is wrong, but a citizen of the real world, I know it is needed. It's beyond my ken that people would sell secrets for something as worthless as money, and I have no sympathy for the traitors sitting in jail for their betrayals.

Even without Mr. Dezenhall and Mr. Russo's excellent portrayal, it is easy for me to understand how the men in this story could be friends while pursuing opposite political goals – or maybe the same goals but from the opposite side of the battle. Whatever image you like better.

If you are interested in thematic and technical aspects of Soviet and US spy craft, I am sure you will like this book.

Well-written and interesting. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in history, specifically the cold war!

This was a very interesting, and somewhat fun, book to read. At its heart were some brutal and horrific characters and events, but the events describe do ring true.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* The book grabs your attention, and keeps it throughout the book. I ended up reading it in a day or two. The characters are larger-than-life, but mostly believable, and I found myself caught up in the actions of these spies, even the Russian ones. The writing is mostly crisp and readable, although there are some long-winded passages and some repeated content.

* The main plot is, in simple terms, incredible. The actions, and consequences, of the main characters actions are incredible, and you can't help but shake your head at the stakes these agents were willing to play for. Their stories did hold my interest.

* Besides the main characters, there is a fair amount of spy "tradecraft" in the book, and this was very interesting and "fun" to read. I am not much of a spy, but it did seem like the information that insiders would know and gave the rest of the book's content more credibility.

* The book is the complete tale of the main characters, and the plot is almost fully resolved by the end of the book. It is a somewhat happy ending to a brutal tale.


=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* At times, the tale became a bit tiresome and repetitive. It wasn't enough to put the book down, but I did wish events would move on a bit quicker.

* There is a fair amount of brutal content in the book. One of the main characters spends a good amount of time in Russian prisons, and the events are described in some level of detail. The violence isn't sensationalized, but is graphic.

=== Summary ===

If you are at all interested in this type of content, the book will capture your interest. If you find this type of material boring or pointless, don't even bother reading. Probably the most amazing part of the book is how, in the end, people had made such great sacrifices for items that may, or may not, have been significant to the rest of the world.

This is as near to a "true story" that can come out of the spy business. It is unfortunate that because I was reading a pre-publication ebook there was no index, nor were the extensive endnotes properly co-ordinated. It was also a book I felt obliged to put down, more than once, when its unblinking narrative became quite literally sickening. You really do not want to know what happens inside Russian prisons or interrogation centres. You are probably familiar with press reports of what happens inside the equivalent western sponsored facilities. It does not make for good bedtime reading.

Keeping track of the large number of people mentioned in the book is also a bit problematic but much revolves around two or maybe three people. One who is called Cowboy - a CIA operative and one who behaves much like him from the former Soviet Union. While much of the action has its roots in the cold war, intelligence and counterintelligence continues to consume resources and bedevil relationships between the US and Russia. Both countries have notably declined in recent years, and revelations about illegal, immoral and often pointless snooping continue. While neither side can actually feel like they are winning, the US seems to be slipping badly simply because its current President has relied on the Russians both to finance his own companies and to undermine democracy.

These failings do get acknowledged at the end of the book. But most of it reads like a an account of two sides simply failing to understand each other because of the way that large bureaucracies function - and become self perpetuating - without actually delivery much of anything. The account of spies on both sides being revealed as assets of the other seemed interminable. The KGB had high level sources inside both the CIA and FBI. Equally, there were US paid intelligence sources - and enough double agents working both sides of the street that no-one actually knew who or what could be relied upon. But even the most successful operations produced little or no information that was useful. Nobody wins becomes the refrain.

Oddly, the most recent intelligence coups by Philip Snowden are treated with contempt. It was not so much that the intelligence services were spying on each other, but their surveillance extended far too far into prying into areas where they had little if any legitimate reason. The wholesale scooping up of telecommunications metadata did little to provide security, but seems to have failed completely to identify the perpetrators of the worst kind within American society. It was never reds under the beds that was the real threat. It was the KKK.

"This is the 300th day of the year.
There have been 294 mass shootings in 2018. There are 10 days until Election Day.Vote like your life depends on it.
Because it does.”

Note: I will publish the post on 5 October: http://manoflabook.com/wp/?p=14876

Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War by Gus Russo and Eric Dezenhall is a non-fiction book which narrates the relationship between KGB officer Gennady Semyovich Vasilenko and legendary CIA officer Jack Platt. Both Mr. Russo and Mr. Dezenhall are published writers with numerous works under their belts.

I love a good spy novel, a great one is even better, and a great non-fiction book which reads like a great spy novel is the best. Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War by Gus Russo and Eric Dezenhall reads like the last one, an approachable and readable book about a complex relationship, geo-political goals, and true friendship.

The authors use extensive interviews of the Mr. Platt and Mr. Vasilenko, as well as unclassified information to tell the stories. The main narrative, besides a long lasting unlikely friendship, is the hunt for an American mole in the intelligence community which has caused untold amount of damage. Mr. Platt was instrumental in finding that mole, Robert Hanssen, unfortunately, Mr. Vasilenko was arrested and wrongfully imprisoned and tortured for years as a result.

Reading about the brutal imprisonment in modern Russia seems like an extension of the old gulag system. Trying to break a person to get unreliable, yet career making, information or a confession, a false one most likely.

The picture the authors paint of the ex-CIA, ex-KGB operators is that of two fun loving, strong and clever men who share much in common (most notably alcohol and shooting). Men who love their respective countries and will do anything out of pure patriotism despite the large personal cost they pay or their ideological disagreements with the current regime. The authors also touch on the difficult price operatives’ families pay, wives and children take second place to country and its needs.

Each person in the book is conveyed with great respect, but does not shy away from revealing some of their flaws which in my opinion makes this book about humans instead of fictional super-spies. Even actor Robert De Niro, who met the two while researching his 2006 movie The Good Shepard, became an admirer and a lifelong friend (he even wanted the charming and charismatic Mr. Vasilenko to star next to him).

The book contains relevant detail to the story the authors are trying to tell. It is not bogged down by details which will slow down the story, even if they might be somewhat relevant – after all, recapping 40 years of two very dangerous lives, lived by two exciting people is not an easy task to accomplish in 336 pages.