Nancy Thorndike Greenspan is the author of The End of the Certain World and the co-author of four books with her late husband, child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Praise for Atomic Spy Nancy Greenspan dives into the mysteries of the Klaus Fuchs espionage case and emerges with a classic Cold War biography of intrigue and torn loyalties. Atomic Spy is a mesmerizing morality tale, told with fresh sources and empathy. --Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames and coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Greenspan sheds new light on the character, family, and motives of the notorious spy who gave the Soviet Union a blueprint for the atomic bomb. Klaus Fuchs's espionage and its consequences raise timely questions about blind devotion to an ideology. --Cynthia C. Kelly, President, Atomic Heritage Foundation A riveting read. Greenspan skillfully and with nuance describes how one of the Manhattan Project's prominent physicists, led to Communism by early struggles against Nazism, eventually became a important spy for the Russians. A tale of intrigue, competing moralities and human fallibility. --Gino Segre, author of The Pope of Physics and Ordinary Geniuses The Soviets had more than a half-dozen spies inside the Manhattan Project, but none was more important than Fuchs, a senior physicist in the theoretical division of the plutonium bomb project. Greenspan takes us through the evidence with assurance. Most impressive is her detailed exposition of the strengths and weaknesses of MI5's investigations of Fuchs in the 1930s and 1940s as well as Fuchs' evolution from German Social Democrat to devoted Communist under the impact of Hitler's rise to power. --John Earl Haynes, coauthor of Spies: the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America