| Larry J. Kolb was born in Virginia and raised around the world. He has
lived in Washington, Japan, New York, London, Berlin, Wiesbaden,
Switzerland, South Africa, and in a safe house on a beach in Florida. As
the son of a senior American intelligence official, Kolb was recruited
by the CIA when he was twenty-two years old, but he declined. Instead he
became a businessman, and the following year was featured on the cover
of The Wall Street Journal. While still in his mid-twenties, he became
an agent for professional athletes, including Muhammad Ali. This brought
Kolb into contact with many of the world's most powerful and wealthiest
people, especially in the Middle East, and made him almost irresistible
to legendary CIA co-founder Miles Copeland. When Copeland recruited
Kolb, Kolb said yes, and soon he was involved in covert intrigues in
Beirut, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Nicaragua, Peru, Pakistan, and India, not
to mention the halls of power in London, New York, and Washington. With
Copeland, Kolb co-wrote white papers for the President of the United
States and the National Security Council. While running a covert
propaganda campaign for Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Kolb
anonymously wrote a widely-published series of investigative newspaper
stories which electrified India. More recently, he has found himself in
a safe house in Florida with nothing to do but listen to the waves roll
in and put down on paper the extraordinary story of his life so far.
Peopled by larger than life characters such as Ali, Gandhi, Copeland,
Daniel Ortega, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Adnan Khashoggi, Imelda
Marcos, and assorted coup plotters, assassins, gem smugglers, dictators,
swindlers, and tycoons, Kolb's memoir, Overworld: The Life and Times of
a Reluctant Spy , is a real-life adventure story which offers compelling
insights into the danger, glamor, and psychology of espionage and covert
statecraft. Overworld is available in the United States and Canada from
the Riverhead Books division of Penguin Group, in the United Kingdom
from the Bantam Press imprint of Transworld Publishers, and in
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth
from Random House. The book will soon appear in translation, in French,
Portuguese, and Chinese.
Motion picture rights have been sold for both Overworld and Kolb's next
book, America at Night, which he is now writing.
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