Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Fair Game:
1. What do you think of Valerie Plame Wilson? Did reading her memoir alter your view of her?
2. Why did Plame Wilson write this memoir? What was her purpose in doing so? Does the book accomplish her goals?
3. Why did Plame Wilson join the CIA? How does she describe the agency and the training the operatives through? Were you surprised by its rigor?
4. How does Plame describe the position of female officers vis-a-vis career advancement in the CIA?
5. How difficult, irritating, puzzling was it for you to read the memoir with all the redactions (blacked out text) by the CIA? Does it make sense that parts of Ms. Plame's career could not be published in her book...even though the information was already in the public domain and readily available for anyone to read?
6. What do you think of the book's Afterword by Laura Rozen? Is it helpful, illuminating, or dull and irritating? Is there anything in Rozen's revelations that might constitute a national security secret?
7. What was your understanding of the Plame Affair—in which members of the Bush administration revealed her identity as a CIA operative—before reading this book? Has your understanding changed as a result of reading the memoir?
8. Do you think it was wrong to have released—and published—Plame's name? Or do you agree with former White House officials that they did nothing wrong because Plame was no longer an undercover agent? Why was her cover blown in the first place?
9. Does this account by Plame of her activities convince you that she once worked under deep cover...which some in Washington had questioned?
10. What damage was been done by the publication of her identity?
11. Is Plame's use of "betrayal" in the subtitle the right word? In what way did the CIA betray her? What should they have done when her identity was revealed?
12. What were her friends' reactions when they found out Plame had been a spy? Were they justified in their feelings?
13. Talk about the impact her career derailment had on her marriage. Had you been a friend at the time, what advice might you have offered?
14. Plame writes "I would soon find out that in Washington, the truth is not always enough." What was she referring to...and why isn't truth enough?
15. Where does the book's title "fair game" come from?
16. How did Plame come to feel about the Bush administration? What does she mean when she says that the efforts to shut her and her husband up were "classic Karl Rove"? Do you agree, as Plame puts it that "their tactics would have made Joseph McCarthy proud"? In what way?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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