was unusual even by soviet standards, particular act of cruelty to take both the mother and father when there is little kids involved. mrs. field was aware that because "the new york times" had a front-page picture of us in my father's impression was that after the brutality of prison, she was stronger than she was the one keeping them together and of course the records from the tbg files, the transcripts because they were loved everywhere, even after they were freed from prison. even in the hospital they were.

reading this transcripts was painful because they are whispering to each other at night and they are never alone and he is saying that just wants to die and she say no, that is just what our enemies, meaning the americans want you to do. you cannot give them that victory. he had to keep it together. we have to rebuild. >> it seems as though you say he followed him into buddhism or anything that does seem like she was extremely devoted. i have the impression from some of the things she says that she was just as devoted a communist issue was. >> hard to imagine her not living the simple life.

when they are reunited after nearly five years apart, they were in the same prison but they didn't know that although occasionally he thought he heard themselves away from him. imagine cheering her coughing and indeed it was at the first question that he asks her after not seeing each other for five years with heavy remained true? not to me, but to the cost. if that is not a fanatic. but she didn't seem to find that odd. she was right there with him. >> and then they asked hal stalin was doing. and stalin was dead.

they started crying. they both sat in tears after five years in prison. >> we need to backtrack a little bit to get the plot established. you explain how moments captured by stalin's agents taken to hungry. he was imprisoned for five years. they're somewhat looking for him with no spread their, herman. they were both imprisoned also for five years or once they had crossed over into the piece. i meant it to his daughter, erica after some time i was looking for them and also has captured. tell us about erica appeared she is really the extraordinary hair win. erica is sort of an unambiguous hair win.

tell us from the beginning that she has the most brutal life. >> she was truly a child of the 20th century. who up in germany a jewish background. again, idealistic. from the doctors go off to spain, volunteer there. the parents are unable to look after erica appeared no inherent who are childless offer to take care of her. being childless on purpose. for the cost. >> they decide that she would divert. if they are going to be devoted stalinist. it's better that they not had untreated. >> one of their better decisions. so terra-cotta is a bright and attractive multilingual german

girl age 17 when the fields adopt her. no has very high hopes for her as a communist in the future. she invigorates the entire narrative because although she hates the nazis commission sees the communist party because they are the only ones doing anything. but she doesn't swallow the faith. nor is crushed when she meets and falls in love with an american shiite cities dream shattering.

when taken prisoner, now married and has two little kids, a six month old and a year and a half-year-old and because she's a fundamentally good person and feels that she owes, she goes looking for them. you don't go looking for people in the gulags are couple lego can expect to come back. stalinist now hatching a big show trial as he had in the 30s to get rid of perceived enemies. in the 30s as crispy as to the enemies. now it is tito, the great hero of yugoslavia has altered from the fold and so stall and is

enraged and orders up all the soviet satellites. and who better to be the chief what is against all these people because nole field is an american, the new animated post the stalin roosevelt brief alliance and nole field knows all this communist from spain and from his refugee work. the book starts out with his kids napping in his hotel in prague and flashes back. but erica has friends in nature and may miss common party. she is worried there. shoe to theories that she was

actually working for the cia the late noel field is working. not a word of truth to that. unlike her adopted father, she has an entirely different prison experience, and so she humanizes for them if that's possible. key difference, noel field is in solitary confinement, which is a brutal. for five years virtually no content except the surly cards. eric i said to the northernmost outpost of the gulags and she is laying railroad tracks in freezing weather, but she is companions. she makes friends. she then has little flirtations. she has about as full of life is you can have in confinement.

so when the entire family is suddenly freed, stalinist now dead, but the family is freed not because there isn't because there is an ounce of kindness and humanity in the kremlin, but because they are interrogator, a horrible thuggish guy, polish defects in turns up in washington. bake cia news conference. if you are friends of the american, you will like. there's many historians bias among us and i was very heartened that the creator of joe weissberg like the americans

found a great deal of regular material in the book. anyway, so this guy turns up consists of field family are alive. they been given up for dead. i know because i interrogated which is a euphemism for torture them and at that point the state department starts bombarding moscow and warsaw and prague with demands for the release of this american family. the family are released including noel and herta from their confinement, and they are afraid of mccarthyist america. but this is one of the amazing unbelievable twist in the story.

that makes sense. they are afraid to come home because they been rebuilt the spies and they would face trial on charges of treason. the extraordinary thing is when the ambassador is he right to hungry contacts them after they requested asylum say they feel blake returning -- he says quite reasonably this is not consistent with american citizenship. renounce your american citizenship if you're working for the enemy remained to fear against the u.s. the extraordinary thing is that he writes this came as a total shock to him. he was very surprised the way he explained it as he said is that his loyalty is to the american people, not the contemporary american government and said he

considers himself a loyal dissent or that the site, as a shock to him just one of many little moments where your job dropped suddenly realized how strange this person is. >> i'm quoting myself. he had the gift of seeing only what he chose to see and he never confronted his demons. >> or just want to ask you about this before we go to questions. 1956 the point where many people got off the bus. a combination of denunciation of stalin and the repression of the hungarian uprising and 56 also. many people then saw the soviet regime for what it was and noel

field did not have stayed loyal. in 68, two years before he died, the prague spring happened and that was repressed as you know. that seems to have affected him. he didn't renounce communism, but he didn't defend the repression and he stopped paying his party dues. why do you think after everything that is half the income of the room as they of the room as they might come in the brutal repression and killing of so many people, why was it the prague spring have finally cracked something. >> noel field spent a lifetime lighting the spies do en masse. the only candidate ever to have come off really is contained in this boat because i was very fortunate in getting hold of

correspondence. the fact is that a 68, the prague spring, the country where he was living, hungary, they were very few people left who still believe he was working in a publishing and literary magazine and i interviewed people who were his colleagues and they all said we were all trimming of our first car and a refrigerator and nobody was a revolution anymore. and that kind of environment, i think some of the juice went out of his can totally dribbled out of his face.

it became a very dry fruit by then. but a number. larissa was unforgivable about noel field. one is he never alleged that the faith for which he had sacrificed everything was in fact as toxic as i would say the islamic fundamentalism that captures young people today. he never acknowledged that he had not only participated in that movement, but have played a role in the assassination of a good communist who stalin wanted to get rid of. there is testimony this is a targeted assassination.

when you realize this is a young man who started with the great dream he promised his father that he would do good things and help prevent another world war. in fact, he gave his life for one of the more violent systems and became it spawned. the book is also the story of a tragic family because his sibling whose children were very helpful to me quite frankly because they were very curious. they want to know to what happened because while the fields were alive, the kbg archives were not a dope and so they never got the story. i don't think this is easy

reading for the family, but at least now they know. those siblings never stopped trying from here, from the united states, they never stopped hoping and trying to bring him back to the family back to america. but the story of eric is a triumphant story. she restarts her life here and has a spectacularly successful american life here. >> a smattering of a foulmouthed schoolteacher. >> every kids dream. we should go to questions at this point. we have about 10 or 15 minutes. there's a microphone over there. >> the information that he was

able to give to the soviet union, was any of the really valuable and did the soviets use it in any way? >> the reason the soviets were so interested in noel field because in the 30s with flashes rising, stalin wanted to have some sense of what if anything washington was prepared to do to fight fascism and noel field with well-placed in the office of western european wing of the state department. to hope along with that. he gave them enough so that the kremlin had a sense that the u.s. wasn't going to be at even the antifascist movement. he also gave a lot of information. he represented the uss at the

london naval conference in may june 30 for a believe. from there, he did a lot of spying and damage. but you know, the measure of whether you are a spy or not isn't determined by the quality of the material. it is determined by your will find that to be très your country and inside he was very guilty as when you read the book, as was alger hiss. not a shred of doubt that his was also fined not for the same branch for soviet intelligence. noel field with them the kbg precursor and alger hiss was military intelligence.

>> thank you very much for the introduction to this madness. when i was a little kid i cried when something died. so it gives you an idea. what do you think it's really psychologically behind the assassination with the classic mixture and regard for human life. what really attracts people to do these things. >> there are somewhat different species than noel field. noel field was not disconnect.

they're a disenchanted with british society. i don't think they gave a the best i can make about job creation. noel field is that he really did start out with high ideals and slowly, slowly this poisonous ideology really soaked into him so that he was ready to pretty much do anything for their faith. there is a personality type that is susceptible to a powerful seduction and he was such a

personality. even without the internet, people like that, they are tablet spotted by those looking for recruits. >> even in the late 30s and early 40s, the soviet union was an up close. during the civil war -- everybody was that the soviet union was all about her possible to find out and still drove those people to work for soviet union. this attraction to the system which nobody knew how it works.

>> grade. the darkness at noon is a book that really rip the veil off the cruelty was tardy in the 40s. this was pre-technological revolution where that was a very long way off and there was a whole lot of really smart propaganda. russian films, russian dances, russian books. the things that larissa and i talked about, the west really shabby performance vis-à-vis

fascism stalin seemingly taking a more active role. there was a huge difference between stalin and lenin. lenin was so soft touch, but lenin first evolved and the execution of communists. stalin was all in favor of maximum executions. i compared the show trials which have nothing to do with justice to isis beheadings as a propaganda tool meant to spread terror. the image of these absolutely reduced former heroes of the revolution, quaking in their

boots and confessing to every crime under the sun. it was pretty repellent and could not believe that these people were innocent because they needed -- it's what you said when the little father died, the little father of the people. even though people know that he was as dominant a figure for the soviet people as fdr was for americans. americans owe my new one president, fdr for 12 years. of course he was a far more

benign character then stalin. >> i have a more general question. how do you seek this character [inaudible] y? >> thank you for asking that in thank you through reading other books as well. i like to portray an era through one character's end with wallenberg it was the holocaust. and the book about my parents, and demands of the thai people, life under soviet rule with my book about george polk. it's about america engaging for the first time as a world power. they think we don't really understand an area until we feel

it. otherwise it is dry academic. it is factual and three human story through portraying a character that we can somehow identify with, we are more able to understand and era. but noel field, the remarkable fact of my parents having been the only journalist to have met to and of course i did hear my parents talk about the strange god and then i started thinking that we've been talking about the parallels between the two areas and that this american

played such a huge role in the last shop there at stalin's rule and that he wasn't dead on mount. we know about kim sobey, british spy, but we didn't know about no field who in some ways did probably more damage, more human damage. when you read the book, you'll be appalled how he basically destroyed his own family. i never said sorry. unforgivable. thank you all very much. do we have time for one more? yes, this very nice lady. >> thank you for the fascinating flora. was there a doubt a daughter of her bitter about the path that

her parents took her down? >> erica was not a better person. erica considered herself a very fortunate person. she even considered prison to have given her a tremendous perspective on life. she adored her biological parents and her father unfortunately died during the war, but she and her mother were very close. she was a remarkable character, the sort you generally encounter in fiction. but she was real. thank you all very much in thank you, larissa. [applause] [inaudible conversations]