The life story of the Polish ambassador to the United States who defected in December 1981. It is an enthralling story, full of tension, tragedy, self-doubt and self-revelation, of one man's career of service to a communist regime, in full awareness of what it was doing to his country, his friends and his family. Spasowski, apparently, is blessed with a prodigious memory. His hundreds of pages contain hundreds of conversations over more than 40 years, all verbatim. It carries the reader along, like a historical novel.