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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.12730092
EAN num: 9780425205624
ISBN number: 0425205622
Label: Berkley Trade
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: November 01, 2005
Publishing house: Berkley Trade
Sale Popularity Level: 110657
Studio: Berkley Trade
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Product Description:
Call me naïve, but when I was a girl-watching James Bond and devouring Harriet the Spy-all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume to the CIA.
Getting in was a story in itself. I peed in more cups than you could imagine, and was nearly condemned as a sexual deviant by the staff psychologist. My roommates were getting freaked out by government investigators lurking around, asking questions about my past.
Finally, the CIA was training me to crash cars into barriers at 60 mph. Jump out of airplanes with cargo attached to my body. Survive interrogation, travel in alias, lose a tail. One thing they didn't teach us was how to date a guy while lying to him about what you do for a living. That I had to figure out for myself.
Then I was posted overseas. And that's when the real fun began.
Amazon.com Review:
In Lindsay Moran's Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, the author comes across is an amusingly candid cross between Bridget Jones and James Bond, with a little Gloria Steinem thrown in to remind readers of the inherent sexism that runs rampant both in the US government and abroad. Moran, a few years out of Harvard and fresh from a Fulbright scholarship in Bulgaria, decides to follow her childhood dream of becoming and spy and, after a grueling interview process that involves several polygraphs and an abandoned foreign boyfriend, goes to work for the CIA. What follows is a surprisingly honest behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to become a real-life CIA agent, signal-sites and all.
Yet more than an insider's guide to the life and times of an undercover agent, Blowing My Cover is a story about a highly educated, obviously intelligent yet occasionally insecure young woman trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, and who she wants to have beside her. As we follow Moran to the 'Farm', a six-month training camp where new recruits are forced into alarmingly real POW situations and asked to perform death-defying car chases reminiscent of old Dukes of Hazard episodes, we also witness her extreme loneliness at being cut off from her friends and family and her fear that she'll never meet 'the one' and settle down. One of the most poignant scenes happens early on in Moran's training, when she meets up with some friends in New York at a party and realizes she can't even tell her closest confidents what she does for a living.
For anyone who's ever wondered what it really means to be a CIA agent, Moran's tale is a worthwhile read. Better yet, for anyone who's ever wondered what she wants to be when she grows up (even at age 30), Blowing My Cover is an ultimately hopeful story of possibilities. --Gisele Toueg
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Rated by buyers 
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The books is pretty good and somewhat revealing. It did drag just a bit in part of the book for me, but I would read it again.
Rated by buyers 
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I picked this book up at a discount shop to read during a long flight. I quickly discovered that I had inadvertently stumbled upon a real gem.
Blowing My Cover describes spy-turned-author Lindsay Moran's journey from a straight-A Harvard student to a cunning intelligence operator in Eastern Europe. While Moran's descriptions of the intense training are gripping, what makes the book truly enjoyable are her own insights. Approaching, at times, almost a slapstick tone, Moran describes her own insecurities and moral dilemmas as she proceeds to enter into the secretive world of the covert operator. Also, she must deal with the difficulties of balancing a personal life with an unusually demanding professional life, as well as her own moral qualms with simultaneously being an actor, con-artist, bureaucrat, and patriot.
Anyone with an interest in real-world espionage will enjoy Moran's fast-paced memoir, even more so if they can relate to her frustrations with the endless bureaucracy and double-speak of government employment.
Rated by buyers 
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I was really torn between a two or a three on this one. I stuck with the two. I will start with the good side. Lindsay has a refreshing writing style. Her wit makes it a fun read. But this is not the biography of an intelligence insider. Moreover, such a person would never write a book like this. With the exception of some descriptive details about the CIA bootcamp (which appears to be about as challenging as the boot camp phase of any of our nation's military academies), there was not a whole lot of new information to be found. And much like the rookie cadet who may have gotten more than she bargained for, Lindsay finds herself out of her element but manages to pull through. My sympathy level is low. While she complains about being sleep deprived, as occurs in many real military training scenarios, she and her buddies prefer to make prank calls rather than grab a cat nap in the corner. She comes across as a debutante in boot camp. I would recommend this book as a primer to anyone who is considering (seriously or not) applying to the CIA. But anyone who is looking for inside information on the workings, procedures, or techniques of the Agency should look elsewhere. In fact, they may not even be available in any unclassified form.
Rated by buyers -
Quirky autobiography of Ivy League overachiever's venture into the CIA sometimes borders on pretentious and annoying, but the writer's self-deprecating sense of humour and humility keeps it grounded.
As a case officer, she recruits foreigners to provide information, not actually spying herself, a distinction which erases Moran's fiction-driven misconceptions while raising ethical dilemmas about providing money and other inducement to convince desperate people to rat on their own countries.
In the end, the failure of the CIA to detect, predict, or prevent September 11, and the unwillingness of the CIA to redirect its activities in the aftermath, drive Moran to realize the purposelessness of the dislocation of her whole life for this career. Hence, her leaving, and this book, the second I have read recently which tell a similar story from different gender and personality standpoints (see review of Overworld: The Life and Times of A Reluctant Spy by Larry J. Kolb). In fact, in retrospect, Moran's more matter-of-fact telling confirms the essential truth of Larry Kolb's overwrought story.
Rated by buyers 
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I've read a few non fiction spy novels, and this by far, had to be the worst one; I kept on waiting for the action to occur, but it never did; probably the most interesting part of the book is towards the end, when the author talks about how she and colleagues felt about 9/11. Normally I can read a book in a day or a week, but this one took me over a month as the story was not captivating enough for me; as far as being a funny book, I did laugh a couple of times about the eastern european lifestyle, as it brought me back a few memories of the homeland living. I must admit that at least the author is honest enough to admit that taxpayer money is being wasted in following dead leads.
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