Cold War captives

Set in the early years of the Cold War, this work of history looks at a period when many Americans believed a third world war could break out at any moment. Newspapers of the time were filled with reports of Soviet forced laborers, prisoners who had supposedly been brainwashed in Korea, and defectors who risked everything to get away. One of the most memorable was Oksana Kasenkina, who threw herself from a window of the Soviet Consulate in New York to reach freedom.

The book uncovers many stories that have since faded from public memory. Its central argument is that the fixation on captivity that gripped postwar America reveals much about the nation's culture and politics, not only about events abroad.