Shadow State, Luke Harding
Shadow State, Luke Harding
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Shadow State
Murder, Mayhem, and Russia's Remaking of the West

Author: Luke Harding

Narrator: Nicholas Guy Smith

Unabridged: 12 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 06/30/2020


Synopsis

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.

About Luke Harding

Luke Harding is a journalist, writer, and awardwinning correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin, and Moscow, and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011, he was the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief. In February 2011, the Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. He is the author of several books, most recently the number one New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Libby on March 17, 2022

Informative, but could certainly have been written in a more engaging style.......more

Goodreads review by Dorin on March 03, 2024

Luke Harding, a journalist and a former correspondent in Russia, is looking at how Russia and its intelligence services influenced elections and democratic processes in the USA and the UK. It is mostly a work of synthesis, much of what Harding focuses on is known and easily available in the form of......more

Goodreads review by Patricia on January 16, 2021

This book had its up and downs for me. While it for sure provided interesting insights in Russia's interference and espionage activities around the world, I found that its lack of structure did not allow for a proper development of the thesis. The best known events (mostly surrounding Trump) were ch......more