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The End of Everything
- Author
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrator
- Bob Souer
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Publish Date
- 7 May 2024
- Run Time
- 10 hours 19 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Jonna Mendez began her CIA career as a “contract wife,” performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or even shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, parlaying her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA. Often underestimated, occasionally undermined, she lived undercover and served tours of duty all over the globe, rising first to become an international spy and ultimately to chief of disguise at CIA’s Office of Technical Service.
In True Face recounts not only the drama of Mendez’s high-stakes work but also the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. This is the story of an incredible spy career and what it took to achieve it.
Critics Review
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“This stupendous book offers a gripping account of catastrophic defeat. Outstanding military historian Victor Davis Hanson takes us through four wars, each of which not only crushed an enemy but destroyed a civilization. Are we doomed to go the way of Thebes, Carthage, the Byzantines, or the Aztecs? To understand the challenges we face, you must read The End of Everything.”—Barry Strauss, author of The War that Made the Roman Empire
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“What a paragon and a powerhouse is Hanson! The hymnal tells us of the fate of ‘Earth’s proud empires’ and the poet reminds us of what will happen to ‘our pomp of yesterday,’ yet it takes an historian of Hanson’s intellectual caliber to explain how and why civilizations are annihilated in war, with example after well-researched and cogently written example. As well as Hanson the historian, however, here too is Hanson the philosopher, with his insightful take on how human nature has failed to adapt to our ultra-technological age. Readers will be shocked quite how often total military, cultural, and societal extirpation happens in in our species’ story. We need to learn from this groundbreaking book how to stop it happening to us.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill
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“In recent years, we have witnessed man’s inhumanity toward man that many thought had been consigned to the distant past. In The End of Everything, Hanson tells compelling and harrowing stories of how civilizations perished. He helps us consider contemporary affairs in light of that history, think about the unthinkable, and recognize the urgency of trying to prevent our own demise.”—H. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds
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Details
- Author
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrator
- Bob Souer
- Duration
- 10 hours 19 minutes
- Release Date
- 7 May 2024
- ISBN
- 9781549174223
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Genre
- Military history, Social and cultural history, Ancient warfare, Military history, War crimes, Genocide and ethnic cleansing
Synopsis
In this “extraordinarily brave and entertaining book” (Sonia Purnell, New York Times–bestselling author of A Woman of No Importance), the bestselling coauthor of Argo tells her riveting, courageous story of being a female spy at the height of the Cold War  Jonna Mendez began her CIA career as a “contract wife,” performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or even shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, parlaying her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA. Often underestimated, occasionally undermined, she lived undercover and served tours of duty all over the globe, rising first to become an international spy and ultimately to chief of disguise at CIA’s Office of Technical Service.   In True Face recounts not only the drama of Mendez’s high-stakes work but also the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. This is the story of an incredible spy career and what it took to achieve it. 
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