My second novel, The Florentine Entanglement, is set in the Cold War-era—when women teased their hair into high bouffants, a haze of cigarette smoke routinely perfumed public spaces, and fallout shelters were a common feature from government buildings to suburban homes. Researching this era, and the U-2 incident specifically, proved more challenging than wading into the vast library of World War Two history I explored for my first book. The spy plane program was, after all, a top secret operation.

***Pilot Francis Gary Powers's helmet, part of an exhibition of the remains of U-2 destroyed May 1, 1960 near Sverdlovsk (currently Yekaterinburg).***
***Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure.***

This was the first high-tech project undertaken by the CIA and the U-2s overflew the Soviet Union for several years without issue—until Capt. Francis Gary Powers’ plane fell from the sky. Much about the shoot-down remained classified for decades, as CIA spymasters protected reputations and careers, giving rise to opinions and hunches and conspiracy theories about exactly what happened on that May Day in 1960. Powers and all the U-2 pilots had been carefully screened before they were “lent” from the military to the CIA for this special assignment. They had agreed to the terms of the program—that they would die before letting this advanced technology fall into the hands of the Soviets. Did Frank Powers not hit the aircraft destruct button or take that dose of poison because his plane was out of control—and he couldn’t reach the goods? Or was it because (like most of us, I suspect) he wasn’t ready to die? That he didn’t follow through—and spilled copious program details to the Soviets once he was caught and interrogated—has prompted endless speculation in the years since.

Several of the books I’ve listed below deal principally with the U-2 incident. Others will interest those who wish to learn more about the CIA, the spy craft of the era, and the high stakes of the American-Soviet rivalry. They explore an era that began as the guns of World War Two went silent and continued until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. I’ve also included Bill Browder’s excellent book Red Notice and Alexei Navalny’s heartbreaking memoir Patriot, which help decode how Russia veered from perestroika and glasnost to the autocracy it has now, sadly, become. As you’ll read in these accounts, agents, operatives, soldiers, and others who operated on both sides of the Cold War often paid dearly for it, wherever their true loyalties lay.