Born to Spy - Recollections of a CIA Case Officer (Paperback)

Author Austin Goodrich chronicles a life at home and abroad from his Depression era formative years in Battle Creek, Michigan, through World War II as an infantry soldier in Europe, to his long career as a field agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in countries around the world. Goodrich recounts a youth of vacant-lot ballgames and childhood antics, where he and his siblings tested their parents' limits. Sneaking cigarettes with friends may have helped prepare him for a life of clandestine meetings in exotic, faraway places. Traveling through Europe in the late '40s and observing firsthand the beginnings of Cold War tensions steered him toward a profession as a secret agent.