Comments for Reunification: A Monterey Mary Returns to Berlin

Reunification: A Monterey Mary Returns to Berlin: 04/22/14

Reunification: A Monterey Mary Returns to Berlin by T.H.E. Hill is a return to the cold war hijinks that both sides participated in the name of world piece. There was a hell of a lot of spying and a hell of a lot of subterfuge in the form of feeding the other side bogus info.

Berlin, a city originally occupied by both sides and later divided by both and given to West and East Germany was a perfect location for spying and dissemination of false info. This book takes a humorous look at the aftermath of all that top secret tom foolery in Berlin.

Mike Troyan is visiting at the approach of the 50th anniversary of the building of Teufelsberg. His trip there to tour the site and to go through old files, reconstructed with the aid of modern computers which can deal with old school shredding.

His chance to read the files and meet with old colleagues provides a framework for a series of episodic flashbacks. These things start with the "official" report and then Mike's recollection of things. Very rarely is there any correlation between the two &emdash; to show just how bad intel can take on a life of its own.

As a cataloger, I can attest to how quickly bad data can spread. Computers have made sharing data very easy. But it's just as easy now to miss errors in data. So a typo, or a wrong name, or something that should be obvious, can spread across hundreds of institutions as everyone imports data from the original file.

Four stars

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