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Summary
Summary
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Fast and thrilling . . . Life Undercover reads as if a John le Carré character landed in Eat Pray Love ." -- The New York Times
Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter
Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to "the Farm," where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover--the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.
Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent--an impossible to put down record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion.
Author Notes
Following her CIA career in the field, AMARYLLIS FOX has covered current events and offered analysis for CNN, National Geographic, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and other global news outlets. She speaks at events and universities around the world on the topic of peacemaking. She is the co-host of History Channel's series American Ripper and lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fox delivers a gripping memoir about the near decade she spent working for the CIA to help stop terrorism. The 2002 kidnapping and beheading by extremists of her writing mentor, journalist Daniel Pearl, compelled Fox to apply to the master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown University. Fox's thesis work caught the attention of a CIA official in residence at the school, and she enthrallingly discusses joining the CIA at 22 and then being selected to be part of the CIA's elite Clandestine Service, where her duties included mapping the connections between al Qaeda lieutenants. In her strange new world, every colleague has a bogus identity, and Fox's description of her wedding day is surreal: "I walk down the aisle, past work friends whose real names I'll never know," she writes. Fox's work to prevent terror attacks--some of which she conducted while pregnant--involved tracking arms deals and took her to places like Tunisia, where she connected with a Hungarian arms dealer she later recruited for the CIA, and to Pakistan, where she convinced militants not to go through with a planned bombing. Fox's CIA life ended after the birth of her daughter, who inspired her to shed her "mask" and work publicly for peace as a community builder. Fox masterfully conveys the exhilaration and loneliness of life undercover, and her memoir reads like a great espionage novel. (Oct.)
Kirkus Review
A journalist recounts her formative years in the CIA.Fox engaginglyand transparentlydescribes her work as an undercover agent for the CIA, which recruited the author while she was still in college. "What will happen if I tell the world the truth?" she asks, having returned to civilian life as a young single mother following the dissolution of a marriage that was all but arranged by the agency. Motherhood changed her perspective and priorities, and she now devotes herself to the cause of peace. In her fast-moving debut memoir, she seeks to "spill that most secret of secrets: that all we soldiers and spies, all the belching, booming armored juggernauts of war, all the terror groups and all the rogue states, that we're all pretending to be fierce because we're all on fire with fear." The author's life was extraordinary even during her childhood, as if she were being raised for a life in espionage. She often went "wild world-wandering" with her father, who consulted with foreign governments on matters she never quite understood. Fox was raised to invent elaborate fantasies to play with her brother, and her world of make-believe intrigue became real to her as she volunteered to aid refugees after high school and became immersed in global affairs during college. She came to the CIA as an idealist, and she found idealism and basic humanity within those who were apparently pitted against her. She also found that she had to keep the reality of her career a secret from everyone, even from family and friends. Throughout much of her remarkable life, secrecy was the norm, but by the time she left the agency, she'd had enough. A well-written account of a life lived under exceptional secrecy and pressure. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
At the age of 18, Fox traveled to Burma, a country in the midst of antigovernment riots, and interviewed the leader of the opposition movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest. So begins Fox's path to the CIA. For a decade, she works as an undercover agent abroad, fighting terrorism and countering nuclear proliferation all without her friends or family knowing her reality. She and her husband, whom she met in the CIA, don't even know the details of each other's missions. It is a strange and lonely life, but Fox manages to find moments to share her truth and discovers that recruiting assets (like Jakab, an arms broker who steals every scene he is in) is aided not by fear but by finding their shared humanity. Fox's clear, present-tense prose keeps readers in the action while maintaining the heft of reality, even in totally surreal situations. With loads of suspense and adrenaline, and a streaming series starring Brie Larson reportedly in the works, this insider's view into how the CIA functions and what life is like for a covert agent will appeal to many, including readers who don't normally stray from fiction thrillers.--Kathy Sexton Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Fox, cohost of the History Channel's American Ripper, describes her path to a career in the CIA in riveting detail. After high school and prior to Oxford, she travels to Southeast Asia to work with refugees fleeing Rangoon (Yangon). She not only meets the formidable Aung San Suu Kyi but manages to interview her and smuggle a tape of the conversation to Bangkok, where it's broadcast on the BBC. This chutzpah gets her on the radar of journalists such as Daniel Pearl, who became something of a writing mentor and whose beheading leads her to pursue a master's degree in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown. She is recruited by the CIA at 21 and handpicked for advanced operations training, where she learns how to use a Glock, recruit an asset, and withstand torture. Fox is sent to the Middle East under nonofficial cover, a highly coveted and especially dangerous assignment. Under the guise of an art dealer, she infiltrates terrorist networks, specifically those trafficking in nuclear weapons. Relating her experience of being a young woman in the CIA and balancing family life while undercover in a hostile country is invaluable to readers. VERDICT Fans of Showtime's Homeland and espionage novels will devour this highly recommended memoir, as will readers interested in counterterrorism, nonprofileration, and peacemaking. [See Editors' Fall Picks, "Fall Fireworks," LJ 8/19.]--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID