A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Luke Harding. (2017). A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Luke Harding. 2017. A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War With the West. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Luke Harding, A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War With the West. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017.

Luke Harding. A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War With the West. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/506/AE8/47/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/506/AE8/47/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101974001
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 546228
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B01MTJR2QW
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 546228
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101974001
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 546228
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Luke Harding

title

A Very Expensive Poison

dateAdded

2017-02-02T17:20:00-05:00

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=3027733
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Very Expensive Poison The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putins War with the West

crossRefId

3027733

subtitle

The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West

id

506ae847-aa45-432f-a295-4fa09e8bc6e4

starRating

4.1

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: AVeryExpensivePoison_9781101974001_3027733
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 31363973
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101974001
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 546228
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 1/24/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=506ae847-aa45-432f-a295-4fa09e8bc6e4&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: AVeryExpensivePoison_3027733
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 546228
     2. • type: ASIN
        • value: B01MTJR2QW
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 1/24/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=506ae847-aa45-432f-a295-4fa09e8bc6e4&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: AVeryExpensivePoison_9781101974001_3027733
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 31363929
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781101974001
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 546228
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 1/24/2017
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=506ae847-aa45-432f-a295-4fa09e8bc6e4&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: Political
2. • value: politics
3. • value: War
4. • value: poison
5. • value: Kremlin
6. • value: Ukraine
7. • value: dissident
8. • value: russian history
9. • value: Panama
10. • value: crime
11. • value: Moscow
12. • value: true
13. • value: oligarchy
14. • value: Death
15. • value: FSB
16. • value: Oligarchs
17. • value: murder
18. • value: russian
19. • value: collusion
20. • value: espionage
21. • value: FBI
22. • value: Syria
23. • value: Crimea
24. • value: police
25. • value: KGB
26. • value: Men
27. • value: violence
28. • value: CIA
29. • value: corruption
30. • value: toxic
31. • value: mi6
32. • value: leningrad
33. • value: war history
34. • value: Litvinenko
35. • value: putin
36. • value: history of ukraine
37. • value: chechnya
38. • value: gifts for dad
39. • value: political books
40. • value: dictatorships
41. • value: war books
42. • value: dad gifts
43. • value: new dad gifts
44. • value: Putin biography
45. • value: alexander litvinenko
46. • value: political science books
47. • value: russia book
48. • value: russia books
49. • value: Putin book
50. • value: ukraine book
51. • value: war gifts

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Harding, Luke
   • bioText: Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian’s bureau chief in Moscow. The Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war, in part because of his reporting on Alexander Litvinenko’s murder.
     He is the author of four previous non-fiction books: The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man; Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia; WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy; and The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (the last two co-written with David Leigh).
     Two have been made into Hollywood movies. Dreamworks’ The Fifth Estate, based on WikiLeaks, was released in 2013. Director Oliver Stone’s biopic Snowden, adapted from The Snowden Files, appeared in 2016. In 2014, Luke was awarded the James Cameron prize. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages. Luke lives near London with his wife, the freelance journalist Phoebe Taplin, and their two children.
   • name: Luke Harding

imprint

Vintage

publishDate

2017-01-24T00:00:00Z

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

A Very Expensive Poison

fullDescription

A true story of murder and conspiracy that points directly to Vladimir Putin, by The Guardian’s former Moscow bureau chief and author of The Snowden Files and Collusion
On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium—a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance.
Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story—complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters. He shows how Litvinenko’s murder foreshadowed the killings of other Kremlin critics, from Washington, DC, to Moscow, and how these are tied to Russia’s current misadventures in Ukraine and Syria. In doing so, he becomes a target himself and unearths a chain of corruption and death leading straight to Vladimir Putin. F
rom his investigations of the downing of flight MH17 to the Panama Papers, Harding sheds a terrifying light on Russia’s fracturing relationship with the West.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "Harding’s exposé, shortlisted for the CWA Nonfiction Dagger Award, could not be more chilling or timely. . . . A devastating and disturbing must-read."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus 
   • content: "A chilling look at the Putin regime's murderous suppression of its critics. . . . In this fast-paced book, Harding, who was expelled from the Kremlin while serving as the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief, covers all the bases while exposing the weakness and accommodationism of the now-departed British leadership. Hard-hitting and timely given Russia's continued sway in international politics as well as its documented influence over an incoming American administration that is also hostile to the press."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Evening Standard
   • content: "Extraordinarily pacy...one of the best political thrillers I have come across in years."
4. • premium: False
   • source: The Times
   • content: "Harding...tells this ghastly tale with real authority, wit, and panache. . . . The book is as 'definitive' as it claims."
5. • premium: False
   • source: London Review of Books
   • content: "Gripping."
6. • premium: False
   • source: A. D. Miller, author of Snowdrops
   • content: "An expert chronicler of a sensational but opaque crime...Enthralling."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Oliver Bullough, author of The Last Man in Russia
   • content: "Harding lays out every fact connecting it in thrillerish detail to the dark undercurrents of life in today's Russia."
8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 19, 2016
     Harding (The Snowden Files), a foreign correspondent for The Guardian, covers the 2006 poisoning of Russian exile Litvinenko in informative detail and sensationalist style. Drawing on interviews, original reportage, and a British public inquiry, Harding reiterates the inquiry’s findings: Litvinenko was the victim of a political assassination that was indistinguishable from a gangland hit. Born in 1962, Litvinenko had been an officer of the FSB, Russia’s national security service (and KGB successor), until he tipped off a friend, oligarch Boris Berezovsky, about a planned attempt on Berezovsky’s life. Fleeing the wrath of Berezovsky’s would-be assassins, in 2000 Litvinenko and his family found refuge in London, where Litvinenko became a security advisor, MI6 informant, and dissident speaking out against Russian president Vladimir Putin and his “mafia state.” A casual meeting with two business associates, Andrey Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, cut short Litvinenko’s activities. According to forensics experts following a trail of radiation, the two had been transporting polonium, which ended up in Litvinenko’s tea, killing him within weeks. The public inquiry found that Litvinenko was certainly killed by Lugovoi and Kovtun, the flunkeys of an FSB operation that was “probably approved” by Putin. Harding suitably conveys the shocking, violent, and tragic story of a man whose murder has gone unpunished.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 1, 2016
     A chilling look at the Putin regime's murderous suppression of its critics.In 2017, observes Guardian foreign correspondent Harding (The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man, 2014, etc.), the Russian president will likely stand again for the office, and winning it--as he certainly will--will put him in the running to be the longest-serving ruler that nation has seen. Meanwhile, under his regime, Russia has "gone from a semi-democracy into something approaching a dictatorship." No one has been more aware of that transformation than Russia's journalists, one of whom, Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006), had been assembling evidence of Putin's links to Russian organized crime, combining to form a "mafia state." Litvinenko was silenced by assassins who used polonium to poison him, the first such case in medical history. Litvinenko happened to be in London at the time, which means that the assassins had to enter a country with which Russia was not at war in order to conduct murder, making the case a matter of national security interest. However, Harding writes with mounting indignation, the British government steadily backed down in the face of Putin's continued aggressions not just against his own citizens, but also in the Crimea. By the author's account, British Prime Minister David Cameron effectively helped cover up what had by then become the well-known fact of official murder, determined not to harm trade interests. The British government, said one observer, was worried about Putin's ire, while British intelligence agents were worried about meeting Litvinenko's fate; Putin was "concerned about being called a mafia boss." In this fast-paced book, Harding, who was expelled from the Kremlin while serving as the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief, covers all the bases while exposing the weakness and accommodationism of the now-departed British leadership. Hard-hitting and timely given Russia's continued sway in international politics as well as its documented influence over an incoming American administration that is also hostile to the press.

     COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      December 1, 2016
      Prior to the death by radioactive poison of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 (see Alan S. Cowell's The Terminal Spy, 2008), as award-winning journalist Harding notes, It might have seemed improbable verging on incredible that Russian assassins might murder someone on the streets of London. Yet Harding's tour de force account of Russian murderous mayhem only starts with Litvinenko's shocking death. He quickly moves on to such suspicious deaths as Boris Berezovsky's locked-bathroom suicide and Alexander Perepilichny's post-jog cardiac arrest, noting along the way that others, mostly those who dared to oppose Putin and his minions, met deaths mysterious or legal but brutal. Many of those threatened or destroyed initially believed that Putin was going to blot out corruption. Instead, they discovered that his aim was to redistribute the state's resources among his KGB friends. Harding's expose, shortlisted for the CWA Nonfiction Dagger Award, could not be more chilling or timely. As Berezovsky's daughter states, her father perceived Putin as a danger to the whole world. And you can see that now. A devastating and disturbing must-read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from December 1, 2016
      

      Harding (former Moscow correspondent, The Guardian; The Snowden Files) has contributed a remarkable book to the burgeoning revelations about Russian President Vladimir Putin's violence against perceived opponents. Harding's main thrust concerns the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko in Great Britain at the hands of Russian agents, using the highly radioactive isotope polonium-210. Litvinenko was a Russian operative tracking organized crime, who received asylum in Britain. This book further examines the deaths in Britain of "oligarch" Boris Berezovsky and investor Alexander Perepilichny; in Washington, Mikhail Lesin; in Moscow, the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and opposition figure Boris Nemtsov. The poisons used in Britain and circumstances of death establish that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) acted at Putin's behest. The downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 by Russia's "mafia statelet" in Eastern Ukraine pushed the details of Litvinenko's murder into public view through an official inquiry, nearly nine years later. Harding concludes with an unveiling of the "Panama Papers," exposing Putin's ties to secret offshore wealth. VERDICT This detailed and thrilling page-turner portrays Russia's president as a "vindictive" murderer of "personal enemies." Recommended for all larger collections. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/16, p. 30.]--Zachary Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Erie

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

272

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/506ae847-aa45-432f-a295-4fa09e8bc6e4/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
• shareInLibby:
  • href: https://link.overdrive.com/share?q=FTMuAMShdiw
  • type: text/HTML

id

506ae847-aa45-432f-a295-4fa09e8bc6e4

starRating

3.9

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/506/AE8/47/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/506/AE8/47/{506AE847-AA45-432F-A295-4FA09E8BC6E4}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: History
2. • value: Politics
3. • value: True Crime
4. • value: Nonfiction

publishDateText

01/24/2017

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781101973998

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

A true story of murder and conspiracy that points directly to Vladimir Putin, by The Guardian’s former Moscow bureau chief and author of The Snowden Files and Collusion
On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium—a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance.
Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story—complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters. He shows how Litvinenko’s murder foreshadowed the killings of other Kremlin critics, from Washington, DC, to Moscow, and how these are tied to Russia’s current misadventures in Ukraine and Syria. In doing so, he becomes a target himself and unearths a chain of corruption and death leading straight to Vladimir Putin. F
rom his investigations of the downing of flight MH17 to the Panama Papers, Harding sheds a terrifying light...

sortTitle

Very Expensive Poison The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putins War with the West

crossRefId

3027733

subtitle

The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West

publisher

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

bisacCodes

1. • code: HIS032000
   • description: HISTORY / Russia / General
2. • code: POL036000
   • description: Political Science / Intelligence & Espionage
3. • code: TRU001000
   • description: True Crime / Espionage