At a time when Russia is alleged to have manipulated the recent US Presidential elections, Kati Marton returns to the American Academy to present her latest book, an astonishing tale of past intervention by Moscow in the highest reaches of the US government. True Believer (Simon & Schuster, 2016) reveals the life of Noel Field, an Ivy League-educated State Department employee, who was deeply rooted in the culture and history of the United States yet spied for Joseph Stalin. Like many of his generation, Field was attracted to communism’s promise to right social and political wrongs. But how did his initial idealism lead him to betray both his country and his family? With a reporter’s eye for detail and a historian’s grasp of the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, Marton captures Field’s riveting quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong. Though set largely from the 1920s to the 1950s, this story of fanaticism and its profound effects is just as relevant today.

Generously supported by Daimler-Fonds