Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre · 364 pages

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

Peter Hopkirk · 570 pages

An account of the encounter last century between the British in India and Tsarist Russia in Central Asia which became known as the "Great Game". When the encounter began the frontiers of Russia and British India lay some 2000 apart. By the end, the gap had shrunk in places to 20 miles.

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

Jennet Conant · 403 pages

When Roald Dahl, a dashing young ex-RAF pilot, took up his post at the British Embassy in Washington, his assignment was to use his good looks, wit, and considerable charm to gain access to the most powerful figures in American political life. Dahl would soon be caught up in a web of deception masterminded by Intrepid, Churchill's legendary spy chief. In an account better suited to a work of s

The Zimmermann Telegram

Barbara W. Tuchman · 244 pages

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

Stephen Kinzer · 272 pages

This is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953--a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. Stephen Kinzer's compelling narrative is at once a vital piece of history, a cautiona

Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War

Giles Whittell · 274 pages

Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange between East and West? Bridge of Spies traces the paths to that exchange on February 10, 1962. It is the story of three men -- William Fisher, alias Rudolf Abel, a British born KGB agent arrested by the FBI in New York City and jailed as a Soviet s

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames

Kai Bird · 448 pages

Drawing on extensive interviews with Ames' widow and quotes from his private letters, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer presents a brilliant narrative of the making of America's most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East. The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird's compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important oper

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

David E. Hoffman · 312 pages

"While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States. From 1979 to 1985, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer at a military research center, cracked open

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage

Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, Annette Lawrence Drew · 406 pages

Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service

Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal · 400 pages

The Mossad is widely recognized today as the best intelligence service in the world. It is also the most enigmatic, shrouded in secrecy. This book unveils the defining and most dangerous operations that have shaped Israel and the world at large from the agency's more than sixty-year history, among them: the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the eradication of Black September, the destruction of the Syria

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Steve Coll · 728 pages

An account of the CIA's involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to bin Laden's al Qaeda. For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies-invisible wars which sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and which pro

Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game & the Race for Empire in Central Asia

Karl Ernest Meyer, Shareen Blair Brysac · 647 pages

"The world's oldest established imperial rivalry had its start during the Napoleonic age when British agents came upon the tracks of Russian rivals in snowbound Tibet, and then again in mythic Bokhara, deep in Central Asia. Was the Tsar planning to invade India, or even worse, was Russia bent on global dominion? To foil these real or imagined schemes, the British twice invaded Afghanistan, and in

Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War

Lynne Olson · 576 pages

"When the Nazi Blitzkrieg subjugated Europe in World War II, London became the safe haven for the leaders of seven occupied countries--France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Poland--who fled there to avoid imprisonment and set up governments in exile to commandeer their resistance efforts. The lone hold-out against Hitler's offensive, Britain became a beacon of hope to th

George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution

Brian Kilmeade, Don Yaeger · 205 pages

This book portrays the intelligence agents known as George Washington's secret six, who were recruited by Washington to gather information secretly and contributed to the general's successes in the Revolutionary War. The coauthor is Don Yaeger.

Agent Garbo

Stephan Talty · 323 pages

Before he remade himself as the master spy known as Garbo, Juan Pujol was nothing more than a Barcelona poultry farmer. But as Garbo, he turned in a masterpiece of deception that changed the course of World War II. Posing as the Nazis’ only reliable spy inside England, he created an imaginary million-man army, invented armadas out of thin air, and brought a vast network of fictional subagents to l

One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein

Whitney Alyse Webb · 544 pages

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War

Karen Abbott · 536 pages

"The never-before-told story of four real-life women who risked everything to take on a life of espionage during the Civil War"--Provided by publisher.

The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

David Crist · 638 pages

The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi

Neal Bascomb · 258 pages

This narrative nonfiction adaptation of HUNTING EICHMANN chronicles the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis' Final Solution.

Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Steve Sheinkin · 266 pages

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned 3 continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War

Mark Harris · 511 pages

Traces the World War II experiences of five legendary directors including John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra and George Stevens to assess the transformative impact of the war and period beliefs on Hollywood. By the author of Pictures at a Revolution.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson · 464 pages

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Scott Anderson · 577 pages

This book is a thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential episodes in twentieth-century history -- the Arab Revolt and the secret "great game" to control the Middle East. The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, "a sideshow of a sideshow." Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant atten

The Parade's Gone By...

Kevin Brownlow · 577 pages

Passing in review here is the silent film era and Mr. Brownlow has done a splendid job of vitalizing the past through interviews and personal research. Most of this material has never seen print before and the filmophile will go wild over reminiscences such as Joseph Henabery's (who assisted Griffith on Intolerance). And the snaps: Garbo who loved watching talking pictures in reverse but refused t