- Hardcover: 329 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Press (2 Oct 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0593051017
- ISBN-13: 978-0593051016
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.2 x 4.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,980,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
' A terrific memoir. Larry Kolb explicates the world of espionage and secrets with sagaciousness and savvy. This book is a stand-alone original.' James Ellroy
Product Description
This gripping memoir by a former American intelligence operative is a vivid portrait of a spy at every stage of his life and career. Raised in various countries around the world as the son of an American spymaster, Larry Kolb tells how his father taught him to think, look and listen like a spy, and how a friend and colleague of his father attempted to recruit him to the CIA. Kolb declined, choosing instead to become an international businessman. His early success - in his mid-twenties he became an agent for several professional athletes, including Muhammad Ali - brought him into contact with many of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men, making him irresistible to master spy and CIA co-founder, Miles Copeland. When Copeland later tried to recruit him, Kolb accepted, and soon he was involved in covert intrigues in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Pakistan and India. Peopled by larger than life characters such as Adnan Khashoggi, Imelda Marcos, Rajiv Gandhi and Ronald Reagan, OVERWORLD is a real-life adventure story of the highest order which offers compelling insights into the danger, glamour and psychology of espionage - as well as an extraordinary glimpse into the real corridors of global power.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked a copy at the airport before flying home from America, and I couldn't put it down. Kolb tells the true story of the son of a spy who tried not to follow in his father's footsteps but ended up doing so anyway. But it's more than a spy thriller. Somehow this vast, swirling storm of a memoir is also a social and cultural history of the second half of the Twentieth Century-with some of the most amazing real-life characters ever written all shifting in and out of the author's life. We meet the author's father, an American spymaster at the height of his powers while the author was still a child living in Cold War Japan, Britain, and Germany. By the age of eleven, Kolb is so curious about his father's work, that he takes to spying on his father and the spies who worked for him-beginning to learn about the secret world. While still in his twenties, Kolb becomes a close friend of Muhammad Ali, and soon he is traveling around the world with Ali "meeting presidents and kings and dictators." This gives Kolb the sort of access in Middle Eastern capitals that brought him to the attention of CIA co-founder and Mideast specialist Miles Copeland. Copeland recruits Kolb, trains him in the ways of spies, on the streets of London, then sets him to work. And now we meet Saudi billionaire and covert statesman Adnan Khashoggi, President Ronald Reagan, and Vice President George Bush--who seems to be still running the CIA while working out of the Reagan White House. We go to war-torn Beirut for a secret meeting in a safe house in the middle of the night, where we meet Hizbollah terrorist leaders to try to arrange the release of the American and British hostages held in Beirut. We meet Kim Philby and Jesse Angleton. We meet Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, deep in the throes of one of his most difficult struggles with the CIA. We meet Iranian arms dealers, Israeli spymasters, Saudi kings and princes, mujahideen, assassins, gem smugglers, patsies, and secret warriors. We meet Imelda Marcos and her reputed protector Doris Duke. We meet an Indian swami who is plotting to take over control of India, and almost manages it. We even meet Elvis Presley, almost. Yet all of this, and all of these characters, are part of one true spy story-which makes it rather amazing. Beyond the fact that it explains espionage better than any book I've ever read before, and shows us the roots of the problems now plaguing America's intelligence services, with such a rich cast of real-life characters this book is also somehow like Zelig, or Little Big Man, only it's true. Read this book!
Format:Hardcover
A fairly readable memoir of this former American intelligence operative. I found some parts of this book more enjoyable than others. I wondered why someone like Adnan Khashoggi entertained a tinpot Swami from India.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked a copy at the airport before flying home from America, and I couldn't put it down. Kolb tells the true story of the son of a spy who tried not to follow in his father's footsteps but ended up doing so anyway. But it's more than a spy thriller. Somehow this vast, swirling storm of a memoir is also a social and cultural history of the second half of the Twentieth Century-with some of the most amazing real-life characters ever written all shifting in and out of the author's life. We meet the author's father, an American spymaster at the height of his powers while the author was still a child living in Cold War Japan, Britain, and Germany. By the age of eleven, Kolb is so curious about his father's work, that he takes to spying on his father and the spies who worked for him-beginning to learn about the secret world. While still in his twenties, Kolb becomes a close friend of Muhammad Ali, and soon he is traveling around the world with Ali "meeting presidents and kings and dictators." This gives Kolb the sort of access in Middle Eastern capitals that brought him to the attention of CIA co-founder and Mideast specialist Miles Copeland. Copeland recruits Kolb, trains him in the ways of spies, on the streets of London, then sets him to work. And now we meet Saudi billionaire and covert statesman Adnan Khashoggi, President Ronald Reagan, and Vice President George Bush--who seems to be still running the CIA while working out of the Reagan White House. We go to war-torn Beirut for a secret meeting in a safe house in the middle of the night, where we meet Hizbollah terrorist leaders to try to arrange the release of the American and British hostages held in Beirut. We meet Kim Philby and Jesse Angleton. We meet Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, deep in the throes of one of his most difficult struggles with the CIA. We meet Iranian arms dealers, Israeli spymasters, Saudi kings and princes, mujahideen, assassins, gem smugglers, patsies, and secret warriors. We meet Imelda Marcos and her reputed protector Doris Duke. We meet an Indian swami who is plotting to take over control of India, and almost manages it. We even meet Elvis Presley, almost. Yet all of this, and all of these characters, are part of one true spy story-which makes it rather amazing. Beyond the fact that it explains espionage better than any book I've ever read before, and shows us the roots of the problems now plaguing America's intelligence services, with such a rich cast of real-life characters this book is also somehow like Zelig, or Little Big Man, only it's true. Read this book!
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