One of the most talked-about events of the Cold War was the downing of the American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. The event was recently depicted in the Steven Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies. Powers was captured by the KGB, subjected to a televised show trial, and imprisoned, all of which created an international incident. Soviet authorities eventually released him in exchange for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. On his return to the United States, Powers was exonerated of any wrongdoing while imprisoned in Russia, yet, due to bad press and the government's unwillingness to heartily defend Powers, a cloud of controversy lingered until his untimely death in 1977. Now his son, Francis Gary Powers Jr. and acclaimed historian Keith Dunnavant have written this new account of Powers's life based on personal files that had never been previously available. Delving into old audio tapes, letters his father wrote and received while imprisoned in the Soviet Union, the transcript of his father's debriefing by the CIA, other recently declassified documents about the U-2 program, and interviews with the spy pilot's contemporaries, Powers and Dunnavant set the record straight. The result is a fascinating piece of Cold War history. This is also a book about a son's journey to understand his father, pursuing justice and a measure of peace. Almost sixty years after the fact, this will be the definitive account of one of the most important events of the Cold War.

My father, Francis Gary Powers, was a CIA U-2 pilot who was shot down in the midst of the Cold War, on May 1, 1960, while flying in Soviet airspace. After his capture, he was tried for espionage and then served nearly two years in a Soviet prison until his eventual release in exchange for Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the United States in the late 1950s. The two operatives were brought to separate sides of the Glienicker Bridge in Potsdam, Germany, as depicted in Steven Spielberg's motion picture Bridge of Spies, where the exchange took place. While in prison my father kept a personal journal and was allowed to write and receive personal correspondence. In this book are the never-before published journal of my father's thoughts as a Prisoner of War, along with more than 150 personal letters written and received by my father during his captivity.