King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America's Spymaster in Korea

by Blaine Harden

Book Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Camp 14 returns with the untold story of one of the most powerful spies in American history, shedding new light on the U.S. role in the Korean War, and its legacy In 1946, master sergeant Donald Nichols was repairing jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After just three months' training, he was sent to Korea, then a backwater...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052542993X
• ISBN13: 9780525429937
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Blaine Harden is now in my group of Faves, a Nonfiction Writer after Dane Baroness Blixen

KING OF SPIES in both print and audio form, I could not put down. As he said himself, he couldn't believe some of the elements were true himself. His writing is very entertaining, a bit shocking with an element of surprise but factually checked and rechecked, with the division here in this book of before during after Korean War, split on the second half to his time after in the U.S. as a pedophile no less. It's a bizarre reading experience, I had to check the photos and yes, there were many good looking Korean young men around him, and boy... was that a light in the dark, or what was rampant during the War - kick that M. Butterfly out the door hello as too mild. Dang. And linking that to the pedophile in America, sheds some light on M. Jackson also, and others charged as pedophiles. What is of interest is that his background is more amenable to what a Communist would be inclined, with high school education, picking up fast - but then that made it questionable why he was able to get the codes quicker than others. And his frustration with America - the bulwark of FDR, democrat machines on 4th terms or 16 years in America - was an understanding of the American government, formation of the CIA, holding on to its last remnants of power before the turn to Eisenhower's administration, to a "dark" experience per the title. That America repeatedly refused to accept proof and evidence was his frustration throughout, that he was prone to curry favor with a corrupt Rhee was another, and the quick turn of that regime to the next, when he realizes he was just a puppet himself for America's aims. That is what many would feel and understand as soldiers having fought for the U.S. as GI's anywhere in all the wars to date - that they were just puppets in the end for America's aims and no more when they were so wanting and needed great aid not only in the front lines, but after in trying to adjust to civilian life if at all. And how one is so prone when so without desperately to waste the funds that come in after even in indulgence, as in Kojido, even if they know the outcome. This is Blaine Harden at his best.