Top products from r/TheAmericans

We found 23 product mentions on r/TheAmericans. We ranked the 26 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top comments that mention products on r/TheAmericans:

u/flyingfish415 · 2 pointsr/TheAmericans

TV on same level as The Americans is hard, because it's by far the best show I've seen.

But try Ozark - excellent and the actress who plays Kimmie is in it. Homeland. Deutschland 83 & Deustchland 86 (86 is basically the second season of Deutschland 83, and there will be an 89 as well). The Handmaid's Tale.

As far as books:

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00C0ALX7M/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= - About cooking, yes, but also about everyday life in the USSR. Very sweet.

Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003K15IE4/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= - This book (thinly veiled fiction) is a straightforward, but absolutely devastating read about Soviet-style totalitarianism and how everyday people made accommodations to be able to live in such a society. An amazing book. I'm on the stoic side as a reader, but there is one scene in there that catches me at the back of the throat every time I think of it.

The Charm School by Nelson Demille - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000SEGDRW/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= - Honestly, this is no great work of literature, but a spy thriller focused on a Soviet school that trains spies to be "Americans"

Two more writers of note: Anne Applebaum and Svetlana Alexievich. Both write approachable non-fiction about Russia and have multiple, amazing books to check out.

u/displacedpensfan · 10 pointsr/TheAmericans

Oleg Gordievsky and Ryszard Kukliński were two of the West's whales back in the '80s. Kuklinski's story is covered in this excellent book , which I've read. Gordievsky's book is also supposedly pretty good.

Walker was part of the 1985 trio that cost the CIA pretty much every agent they had in the USSR (there were at least two others, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, who were bigger players, and there's good arguments that there was a fourth mole they never caught ). His escape is covered in the excellent TV miniseries The Assets (episode: Trip To Vienna).

u/Sancv · 2 pointsr/TheAmericans

If anyone is interested in History:

Latin American in the Era of the Cuban Revolution


Inevitable Revolutions

Both great books that go well with the theme of Latin America this season. The first book is an easier read, while the second might be better suited for history lovers.

u/ciurana · 6 pointsr/TheAmericans

What /u/kickstand said plus: it's a self-contained season. The spy game moves fast because the story arc is resolved for all characters in only 8 episodes.

The next seasons are rumored to be Deutschland 86 and Deutschland 89, each with a new cast and situations, in a historical context for those years (and boy, was 1989 interesting in Germany).

I haven't caught it on Netflix, but I'm 100% sure it was on Amazon Prime Video because I bought the whole series download ;) - http://www.amazon.com/Deutschland-83-Season-English-Subtitled/dp/B010CCDE4E

I just saw that Hulu may have it too.

Cheers!

u/semioty · 1 pointr/TheAmericans

If you want a great book, that’s also a true story and that takes place in the same time period get “The Spy and The Traitor” it’s basically about a guy who worked his way up to Arkady’s position but was also a double agent for MI6 nearly 10 years:

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/024118665X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ps-uCbXP7T4WD

u/avidiax · 3 pointsr/TheAmericans

Deustchland 83

German spy thriller about an East-German spy embedded under a NATO general during a war game. 2nd season is about shady financial shenanigans in South Africa during Apartheid, and the main character falling in love with a spy from the West. 3rd season coming soon.

----------------------
Counterpart

English-language hard Sci-Fi+Spy series. It's an allegory about the East vs. West split, but it's based on a portal being opened to a mirror of our universe, the two sides of which soon diverge and lose trust with each other, thus the spy game. 2 solid seasons.

u/heretik · 2 pointsr/TheAmericans

I also heartily recommend The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

https://www.amazon.ca/Sword-Shield-Mitrokhin-Archive-History/dp/0465003125

u/Scary_The_Clown · 8 pointsr/TheAmericans

UV tracking dust

It's tricky, because it doesn't leave a trail per se, but you can see what they've touched.

u/EvidenceBasedSwamp · 4 pointsr/TheAmericans

Ahem. They already made one.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07588DG7V

Episode 1:
Married spies Felipe and Elise are given a mission by their handler, actress Margo Martindale. They're not happy about it.

u/SideshowMarty · 4 pointsr/TheAmericans

Bridge of Spies is a pretty decent movie. Not much spying per se, but it's based on the true story of the prisoner trade of Rudolf Abel (a Soviet illegal captured in Brooklyn) for Gary Powers (the captured U2 pilot) and Frederic Pryor.

Despite its cheesy title, The Spy Who Loved is an entertaining biography of Christine Granville, a Pole who worked undercover for the British in occupied France and Poland during WWII.

u/how_did_it_get_there · 5 pointsr/TheAmericans

A lot of fiction in this thread, I'd like to mention some non-fiction:

  1. The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB by Milton Bearden and James Risen - Excellent story of the CIA and KGB from early 80s through the fall of the Soviet Union. Really covers in depth US operations inside the Soviet Union, important defections by senior Soviet military and intelligence personnel, and significant counterintelligence failures (Aldrich Ames). The best part is this is not a history review written by some academic third party, it was written by the guy who actually worked Moscow Station for the CIA during the period and knew Ames and handled many key defections. Moreover it contains a lot of detail on actual tradecraft methods.

  2. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman. This book really goes in depth on the Soviet chemical, biological, and radiological program, as well as the effort towards disarmament. What the Soviets dreamed up was actually quite frightening and they did much of it despite treat obligations. This book is interesting for two reasons: 1) The Soviets (And as conveyed by Phillip and Elizabeth in the Americans) really believed Reagan was a nut whom wanted to leave them on the ash heap of history, which drove their paranoia and pursuit of WMD; 2) It shows behind the scenes that Reagan actually wanted to reduce nuclear weapons and loathed the idea of nuclear war. A significant portion of the book focuses on the impact of key Soviet defectors that provided the US insight in to the Soviet WMD program.

  3. Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century - Sergei Kostin, Eric Raynaud. Farewell was the code name for Vladimir Vetrov, a Soviet KGB Line X (Just like Oleg), whom was responsible for conducting S&T collection operations against the US. He became an agent for the French, and turned over heaps of information on Soviet S&T intelligence objectives and operations worldwide. His intelligence was passed on to the UK and US, and was important to Reagan in negotiations with the Soviet Union. His betrayal caused 100+ Soviet S&T intelligence officers to be expelled from US, the UK, and France. Excellent discussion on the motivation of an agent and stresses at maintaining two lives (Vetrov, in addition to working for the French, was also cheating on his wife... talk about stressful). Also a lot of interesting information on tradecraft such as signals for meetings and dead drops.
u/thesalesmandenvermax · 5 pointsr/TheAmericans

www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Freezer-True-Story/dp/0345466632

I read this in high school. Shit was bananas