{"product_id":"9780892502400","title":"Soviet Observer: My Very Small Part in the Collapse of the Soviet Union","description":"This book is Philip Clendenning's personal journey leading to the exciting Cold War world of economic espionage and reportage. He describes the Toronto of his boyhood; high school and university, and then to Reza Shah's Iran; to Cambridge University and after to NATO's secret Economic Directorate; finally to Harvard's Russian Research Center to monitor the crumbling Soviet Union. The reader will meet a variety of individuals such as Adam Ulam, the astute Harvard political scientist cooling analyzing Bolshevik leaders; Murray Feshbach, the West's leading demographer and health expert; the dissident writer Konstantin Kuzminsky, and Rainer Rupp, East Germany's most trusted spy within the heart of NATO. Clendenning's story is not a simple academic tale of explaining the dry outlay of historical events. Rather it is a story of his development of a Cold War foot soldier. He uses humor, wry observations, and insightfulness to tell a story of how a country began its journey into West European history, rose briefly, wasted its power, finally collapsing with no one to mourn its passing.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oriental Research Partners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49898452549872,"sku":"9780892502400","price":29.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780892502400","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}