Back Channel
Written by Stephen L. Carter
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Stephen L. Carter
Stephen L. Carter is the bestselling author of several novels—including The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White—and over half a dozen works of non-fiction. Formerly a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, he is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught for more than thirty years. He and his wife live in Connecticut.
Related to Back Channel
Related audiobooks
Jackie Kennedy Onassis: The Widow Of Camelot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSatellite Boy: The International Manhunt for a Master Thief That Launched the Modern Communication Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Block in Harlem Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Accidental Suffragist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crimson Rooms: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Refund Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Hold Our Breath: A Journey to Texas Between Storms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrisoners of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Order: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marching to Zion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVirgin Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girl in a Blue Dress: A Novel Inspired by the Life and Marriage of Charles Dickens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trip Wire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Passing Love Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRevolutionaries: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Clearing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strivers Row Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Red Joan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Feminist and the Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Park Lane Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ascent: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Blackmailer's Guide to Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThese Mortal Remains: A Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sins as Scarlet: An Inspector Iwata Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngolin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmong Schoolchildren Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Price of A Child Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sweet Jiminy: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Suspense For You
The Silent Patient Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Holly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect Marriage: a completely gripping psychological suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wrong Place Wrong Time: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Then She Was Gone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Guest List: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The It Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Mercedes: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Missing Girls: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fool Me Once Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Billy Summers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Flicker in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Misery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Turn of the Key Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Teacher Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Green Mile Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Kind Worth Killing: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Zone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Night She Disappeared: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Terminal List: A Thriller Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Stillwater Girls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stone Maidens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bright Young Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Club: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Back Channel
6 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A 19-year-old black college coed finds herself impossibly entangled in the middle of negotiations to end the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, facilitating secret communications between Kennedy and Kruschev. There are people on both sides of the negotiation who would like to see them fail for a variety of reasons and will try anything.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an amazing book. Back Channel crackles with energy as Stephen L. Carter develops an alternative history plot that startles the reader and yet seems all too plausible. The protagonist, 19-year old Cornell sophomore Margo Jensen, is an unlikely person to form the back channel between Khrushchev and JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis but her naivete and spunk is what really fuels the book. The dialog rings true, the characters all feel real, and the historic backdrop is dramatic and accurate. Back Channel is a must read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a work of fiction about the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. I was 9 years old then and living in rural Manitoba. We didn't even have a TV then so I never heard very much about the crisis. Although this is a work of fiction I learned a lot about the crisis and US/USSR relations at the time. Even knowing that nuclear war was averted I felt the fear and unease that gripped people in the US at that time. Margo Jensen is a 19 year old black girl going to Cornell University in Ithaca New York. She is intelligent and principled. One of the classes she is taking is Conflict Theory from Professor Niemeyer who used to be in the secret service and still has ties to many people in government. When Niemeyer takes her aside after class and tells her that her government may need her assistance Margo is incredulous. Soon she finds out that there is a genuine job that she, and only she, can do. Famed chess master Bobby Fischer is going to Bulgaria to play in a Chess Olympiad and liase with a Russian who has information about missiles in Cuba. Bobby refuses to go unless Margo, who he considers a good luck charm, accompanies him. Margo is talked into this job by Niemeyer who claims to have known her father who died during World War II. Niemeyer implies that her father was working behind enemy lines and that he would be incredibly proud of Margo. The Bulgarian trip is just the beginning of Margo's service for the US government. Soon she is a conduit for information between Kruschev and Kennedy and she is in great danger.Apparently there was a back channel for negotiations between Kruschev and Kennedy although it was a journalist not a young college girl. Carter weaves fact and fiction into a compelling read. I had trouble putting this book down. My one complaint is that Margo's ability to extricate herself from difficulties seemed a little too far-fetched. Mind you, if this was a James Bond story her accomplishments would be much greater.Recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another alternate history novel involving a President who was assassinated; this time John Kennedy. It doesn’t deal with his death however, but the Cuban Missile Crisis and the idea that nuclear war was averted because of back channel negotiations. It’s an idea that has promise and mostly was executed well, but making the back channel a 19-year-old girl I think was a mistake in credibility which had to be made up entirely by her value as a sex object, something I don’t know was intended or was what he ended up with because there wasn’t any other plausible alternative. See, she has no standing. None. Other than as a piece of ass which is the cover they use to get her and Kennedy together. At the end, the man who initially recruits her says he chose her to make up for treating her father badly in the war, to salve his conscience, but it is too little too late. Not having been alive when Kennedy was President, I don’t know the extent to which his extramarital affairs were common knowledge, but in this world they are. Our heroine, Margo, is humiliated by it in a way I think few women would be today, but she goes along because they convince her she’s the only one who can save the world. That’s the strongest part of the story; the lies and manipulation that go into putting an operation like this together. From her professor/recruiter, to her first handler to the White House administration; everyone lies to her and the manipulation is on a grand scale. Despite being the critical person in the whole plot, she’s entirely burnable and suffers her betrayals with a stoic patriotism that I didn’t quite buy. If you can let go of what Carter calls the novel’s central conceit; that a back channel can be hidden as an illicit affair with a nobody college student, I think it’s enjoyable and a cracking illustration of political chicanery at its finest.