Reader's Corner

An interview with Chris Pavone, author of the thrilling novel, The Doorman. The book follows a blue collar doorman for a glitzy apartment building in a combustible story of class, privilege, sex, and murder.

An interview with Matthew Goodman, author of Paris Undercover. The book tells the gripping story of two women in Nazi-occupied Paris who create a daring escape line that rescues dozens of Allied servicemen.

An interview with Dipo Faloyin, debut author of Africa is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent. In the book, Faloyin explores the youth-led cultural and political movements that are defining and reimagining Africa on their own terms.

An interview with Sonia Purnell, author of Kingmaker. In the book, Purnell tells the secret history of Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, Pamela Churchill Harriman, whose image as a vapid socialite masked her powerful influence on the world stage for five decades.

An interview with Steve Coll, author of the new book, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq.The book offers the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and an investigation into one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time.

Note: This is an encore edition of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in January 2023.

In 1990, as the United States cobbles together a coalition to undo Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, six US officers are trapped in Iraq with intelligence that could ruin Operation Desert Storm, if it falls into the wrong hands. Desperate, the CIA asks Poland - a longtime Cold War foe, famed for its excellent spies - for help.

In his latest book, From Warsaw With Love: Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance, John Pomfret offers a gripping account of the beginning of the intelligence cooperation between Poland and the United States. Pomfret uncovers new details about the CIA’s black site program that held suspected terrorists in Poland after 9/11, as well as the role of Polish spies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

John Pomfret is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, served as a correspondent for the Washington Post for two decades, covering wars, revolutions, and China. His previous book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations.