Overview

A thrilling account of how Russia is waging a hidden war against America and the West, using espionage, corruption, fake news, and KGB-style murder March 2018. Two Russian assassins arrive in a provincial English city to kill a former officer from Russia's GRU intelligence agency. His crime? Passing secrets to British spies. The poison? A lethal nerve agent, novichok. The attempted execution was a reminder - as if one were needed - of Russia's contempt for international norms. The Soviet Union and its doctrine are long gone, but the playbook used by the Kremlin's spies during that long confrontation with the West is back. And the underlying goal remains the same: to undermine democracy and exploit divisions within American and European society and politics. Moscow's support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump? Similar to those of the Cold War, Putin's ambitions are truly global. His emissaries include oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, mercenaries, and agents of influence. They roam from Salisbury to Helsinki, Ukraine to Central Africa, London to Washington, D.C. Shadow State is the singular account of how the Kremlin seeks to reshape the world, to divide the US from its European friends, and to remake America in its own dark and kleptocratic image. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how our politics came to be so chaotic and divided. Nothing less than the future of Western democracy is at stake.

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9781094157535

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Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow, and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Between 2007-2011 he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief. The Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. In 2014 he won the prestigious James Cameron prize. He is the author of several non-fiction books, most recently the number-one New York Times best-seller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. Other titles include A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West; The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man; and Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia. His books have been translated into 30 languages. Two have been made into Hollywood movies. Dreamworks' The Fifth Estate, based on WikiLeaks, written with David Leigh, was released in 2013. Director Oliver Stone's biopic Snowden, adapted from The Snowden Files, appeared in 2016. A stage version of A Very Expensive Poison premiered in 2019 at the Old Vic theatre in London. Written by Lucy Prebble, it won the Critics' Circle award for best new play. Nicholas Guy Smith, an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a highly rated and diverse voice-over actor who has been heard in feature films, television commercials, and video games. He has voiced characters for Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, and the Cartoon Network.

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