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🧲 Books like this

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Anna Funder Β· back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHauntingHistory
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The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

Masha Gessen Β· 333 pages

This is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world. Handpicked by the "family" surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the oliga

Surveillance StateCold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismNonfiction
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The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

David Talbot Β· 704 pages

"An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful and secretive colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers. America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency

James Bamford Β· 465 pages

The book the NSA tried to suppress -- with a startling new afterword on the Geoffrey Arthur Prime spy case. The National Security Agency is the largest, most secretive, and potentially most intrusive American intelligence agency. It dwarfs the CIA in budget, manpower, and influence. In the three decades it has existed, the NSA has demonstrated a shocking disregard for the law. Until now, the inner

Cold War HistorySurveillance StateInvestigative JournalismNonfiction
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Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

Annie Jacobsen Β· 550 pages

It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens,

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Surveillance StateCold War HistoryHistoryNonfiction
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Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Tim Weiner Β· 727 pages

Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized United States national security. For sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its ter

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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The Bridge at Andau

James A. Michener Β· 258 pages

Recounts, through interviews with refugees, the 1956 Hungarian revolt against Russia.

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Cold War HistoryHistoryInvestigative JournalismNonfiction
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Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion

Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain Β· 384 pages

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Eric Schlosser Β· 656 pages

From investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, comes an account of the management of nuclear weapons. Through accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

David E. Hoffman Β· 577 pages

This riveting narrative history of the end of the arms race sheds new light on the frightening last chapters of the Cold War and the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today. During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the "Dead Hand,"

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

David Grann Β· 339 pages

A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker wr

Investigative JournalismHistoryHauntingNonfiction
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Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die

Garrett M. Graff Β· 529 pages

"The eye-opening truth about the government's secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil--even if the rest of us die--a roadmap that spans from the dawn of the nuclear age to today"--Provided by publisher.

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century

Sergei Kostin, Eric Raynaud Β· 430 pages

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

Stephen C. Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer Β· 320 pages

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA

Ted Gup Β· 398 pages

In the entrance of the CIA headquarters looms a huge marble wall into which seventy-one stars are carved-each representing an agent who has died in the line of duty. Official CIA records only name thirty-five of them, however. Undeterred by claims that revealing the identities of these "nameless stars" might compromise national security, Ted Gup sorted through thousands of documents and interviewe

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Imperium

Ryszard Kapuscinski Β· 331 pages

"Between 1989 and 1991, Kapuscinski made a series of extended journeys through the disintegrating Soviet empire, and his account of these forms the heart of the book. Bypassing official institutions and itineraries, he traversed the Soviet territory alone, from the border of Poland to the site of the most infamous gulags in far-eastern Siberia (where "nature pals it up with the executioner"), from

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War

Giles Whittell Β· 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

Cold War HistoryHistoryInvestigative JournalismNonfiction
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Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia

Mariusz Szczygiel Β· 248 pages

One of Europe's most preeminent investigative journalists travels to the Czech Republic--the Czech half of the former Czechoslovakia, the land that brought us Kafka--to explore the surreal fictions and the extraordinary reality of its twentieth century.

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

Steve Coll Β· 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

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

James W. Douglass Β· 514 pages

In this fascinating and disturbing book James Douglass presents a compelling account of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and why the unmasking of this truth remains crucial for the future of our country and the world. Drawing on a vast field of investigation, including many sources available only in recent years, Douglass lays out a sequence of steps by JFK that transformed him, o

Cold War HistoryInvestigative JournalismHistoryNonfiction
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