Ken Alibek

Kanatjan Alibekov has done some horrible things. Most notably creating a formidable strain of weaponized anthrax, but that is a mere droplet in the aerosolized mist of Alibekov's shady past. You would think his memoir, recounting his rise through the ranks of the Soviet biological warfare program, would be an eye-opening, jaw-dropping, awe-inducing read...right? Most absurdly, it wasn't.

The first noticeable problem with the book was the writing. It just wasn't good. While the book was touted as reading 'like a thriller,' it jumped around in time so much I struggled forming a timeline in my head of what was happening when. Alibekov has delivers the events of his previous life, which should be astonishing, in such a dry and bland cadence that I found the book rather boring. This is not what I expected considering the topic, and who it was written by.

Another problem is Alibekov's lack of detail. He frequently tells you he was weaponizing this and tinkering with that, but he alludes to it such an distant, emotionless manner that it didn't feel all that significant. I've never read a book about the engineering of biological weapons and found myself shrugging noncommittally, but there was just no passion in this book, and I found msyelf dissinterested.

The author also spends a lot of time guessing at things he doesn't know about. Suspicious deaths, what other people might be doing in other labs, why his leaders want biological agents, etc. He should have plenty to say about himself, but he spends much more time theorizing and hinting at things he had no part in.

The oddest part is, I didn't learn much. How can that happen? Granted I've read a quite a bit on this particular topic, but this is a book about a secret biowarfare program that few people have written about, and written by the man who was at the head of it all. How can I go through 300 pages of that and not learn something new? The only thing I learned about was Russian politics, and that was credited to someone else in the Acknowledgements section.

So...what does Kanatjan Alibekov have to offer here? Strangely, it seems not a whole lot. Yes, there is an occasional shocking detail here and there, but overall I felt very unenlightened. The book didn't carry the impact I expected, and I'm just finding myself nonplussed by the whole thing. Disappointing.… (more)