Customer Reviews

Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book because, like so many others in our country right now, I'm interested in intelligence and how it works, and also because the inside cover says Muhammad Ali, who is my all-time hero of heroes is one of the characters in the book. And so he is. Among the many surprises you'll find in its pages, this book tells of Ali on a secret mission for the White House in Beirut negotiating with Islamic terrorists for the release of American hostages, and actually succeeding in getting one of them out. Like so many of the other stories interwoven into this beautifully-written book, it seems so real and yet it left me wondering how could all of this be true? And so I started checking. We live in the age of Google and Nexis - so checking wasn't as hard as you might think. Google this book's author Larry Kolb and you will find dozens, maybe hundreds of stories from Indian newspapers about his role in a covert operation he ran for his friend Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi years ago. Input the right keywords and you'll find out it's true that the Indian government still wants Kolb in connection with this case, and that it's true that, as Kolb writes, the U.S. government refused to extradite him. I also found references to Kolb and Ali, things they've done together, with Google. The Beirut story I couldn't find on Google. But, because I have free access to Nexis thru my company, I was able to find an old Newsweek report about Muhammad Ali on a peace mission to Beirut, just at the time that Kolb said he was there with Ali. The only part that was missing from the Newsweek article was the fact that Ali's mission had been secretly sponsored by the White House. Reading the old newspaper and magazine articles about that and other events Kolb writes about, suddenly you get the impression that what Kolb is telling in this book is the deeper truth, the secret deals and other missing details that were left out of the news stories - because the reporters just didn't know the whole truth. But Kolb was there, behind the scenes, and after several years in hiding to think about it, he's decided to let us in on how things really work in the overworld. I don't want to give away one of the most amazing surprises of the book here, but with a little creative searching with Google, I even found evidence of what to me was the most amazing surprise of the entire book,which occurs near the end. Now that I know it's true, I'm reading the whole thing again, and I can't put it down. You won't be able to either.

Larry Kolb is like one of those interesting people you meet and you hear them telling their stories and you say to them, "You should write a book." Only Larry Kolb actually does go write the book--and you're very glad he did. He's like a brilliant Forrest Gump. A genius instead of stupid. But how he gets himself into situations! Wonderful!

Five stars because this is an amazing life story beautifully written. Not only does Kolb have a wonderful eye for the telling detail, his writing is transparent and accessible in a way that for the first time demystified spying and intelligence for me. Finally I understand what it's all about, in all its complexity and yet also in very simple and human terms. Beyond that, this book is an astute character study of several remarkable men who've shaped Kolb's life: his father, a Cold War spymaster; Muhammad Ali, one of Kolb's closest friends; Adnan Khashoggi, the mysterious Saudi dealmaker and statesman who in his prime was the richest man in the world; Miles Copeland, one of the founders of the CIA and perhaps its most colorful operative ever, who was Kolb's guide into the secret world; and Chandraswami, Indian holy-man-and-snake-oil-salesman extraordinaire. It's written like a novel, and its even got good sex scenes. How Kolb ever survived it all to write about it is a mystery to me. But I'm glad he did.

I know Larry Kolb. When I heard some of his stories, I, like many others, must have wondered what was true and what wasn't. Over the course of a few years, it became clear that it was true. I saw tapes of Ali and him and asked others who knew about him with Jan Stephenson (Kolb is a darned good golfer, and instructor, too), and they all verified his stories.

When I saw that he had a book published, I purchased it out of curiousity. Now that I've read the entire work, I can only say that it is a very impressive piece of work, and an incredible life. Considering the time that we are in now, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how things work in this world. Fascinating.
My only reason for not giving it five stars, was that I thought the editing could have made it a smoother read.

Kolb tells the true story of the son of a spy who tried not to follow in his father's footsteps but ended up doing so anyway. But it's more than a spy thriller. Somehow this vast, swirling storm of a memoir is also a social and cultural history of the second half of the American Century-with some of the most amazing real-life characters ever written all shifting in and out of the author's life. We meet the author's father, an American spymaster at the height of his powers while the author was still a child, living in Cold War Japan, Britain, and Germany. By the age of eleven, Kolb is so curious about his father's work, that he takes to spying on his father and the spies who worked for him-beginning to learn about the secret world. While still in his twenties, Kolb becomes a close friend of Muhammad Ali, and soon he is traveling around the world with Ali "meeting presidents and kings and dictators." This gives Kolb the sort of access in Middle Eastern capitals that brought him to the attention of CIA co-founder and Middle East specialist Miles Copeland. Copeland recruits Kolb, trains him in the ways of spies, then sets him to work. And now we meet Saudi billionaire and covert statesman Adnan Khashoggi, President Ronald Reagan, and Vice President George Bush--who seems to be still running the CIA while working out of the Reagan White House. We go to war-torn Beirut for a secret meeting in a safe house in the middle of the night, where we meet Hizbollah terrorist leaders to try to arrange the release of the American and British hostages held in Beirut. We meet Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, deep in the throes of one of his most difficult struggles with the CIA. We meet Iranian arms dealers, Israeli spymasters, Saudi kings and princes, mujahideen, assassins, gem smugglers, patsies, and secret warriors. We meet Imelda Marcos and her putative protector Doris Duke. We meet an Indian swami who is plotting to take over control of India, and almost manages it. We even meet Elvis Presley, almost. Yet all of this, and all of these characters, are part of one true spy story-which makes it rather amazing. Beyond the fact that it explains espionage better than any book I've ever read before, and shows us the roots of the problems now plaguing America's intelligence services, with such a rich cast of real-life characters this book is also somehow like Zelig, or Little Big Man, only it's true. Read this book.

I picked up this book because the cover looks cool. And found that the text on the back of the cover, which happens to be the opening paragraph of the book, lured me in to the first page, and after I'd read that I had to buy the book and take it right home and read the whole thing. And that's what I did. Nonstop, over one long weekend, plus a Monday, forsaking all of my friends and family, and my job, I just stayed in and read. But it was worth it. It's so entertaining that I almost forgot it's true, and that I was learning about the ways of this wicked world. This is a great read!

Has anyone checked that he really was with Muhammad Ali? That should be easy.

Also, there's this basic problem here. This guy claims to be writing his story from a safe house in Florida. He has a bunch of things in the book that he is not going to tell his interrogators. And yet, he gives so many clues to where he is, and makes it so clear who he is, and what he's done that this claim is ridiculous.

I'm suspicious. While much of it sounds right, there is some basic stuff that is just wrong and doesn't make any sense at all.

So I'm curious if anyone has done some fact checking on this guy's book.

But, true or not, it's one whale of a good tale. It might be. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Kolb is a better writer than he was a spy I think. The story grabbed me from page one and even though this is a huge tome, I was pouring through it at every free minute I had until the end.

The stories he tells that aren't directly about "spy" work are the most interesting parts of the book. His experiences with Muhammad Ali were fascinating. And I'll admit I read on in some places wondering who's name who get dropped next: we go from his connections with Jan Stephenson to Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton to Daniel Ortega, Imelda Marcos (mix a little Rudi Guliani into that plot), everyone who was every prime minister or aspired to be prime minister of India, 1/2 the ruling class of the middle east, Stewart Copeland (drummer for The Police), and Dodi al Fayed in a matter of a few hundred pages. And yes, I went to google and did a search for ""muhammad ali" "jesse jackson" photo elvis" as well as ""rajiv gandhi" kolb" after reading this to convince myself that maybe at least some of it is true.

But what I was baffled by as I got to the end was this: did the author deliberately telegraph the ending so the readers would see it coming easier than he did? Or was it just this obvious who was setting him up and for all of his connections and sophistication, he missed it?

This is a must read for any lovers of spy novels or thrillers of the Clancy genre, with the added benefit that despire the "hero" stepping in something too big of, the story and characters are real.

If you've ever wondered what being a spy is like, read this book. Kolb describes in fascinating detail what growing up as the son of a spymaster was like, and the roundabout path he took to becoming a spy himself. He's known all kinds of people--from Miles Copeland to Muhammed Ali to Adnan Khashoggi (one of the richest men in the world), and he's willing to share everything he knows about them. It's a wild, well-written story made even better because it's true.

I also know Larry from the 80s (during the Eddie V/Jan S days). He was quite a character and very much the poet and writer. I wasn't surprised when I read what he has been doing and that he lived to write about it. Although he was certainly able to tell a great story.... I bet this stuff is true as he was always able to ingratiate himself into places and situations in ways that were shocking. I can't wait to read it!

"Mary"