Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S.

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

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

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

David E. Hoffman · 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,"

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

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos · 385 pages

From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of cold war confrontations

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

MIG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

John Daniel Barron

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

David Halberstam · 727 pages

Around Thanksgiving, 1950, while the rest of the country paid as little attention as possible, units of the Second Infantry Division were virtually annihilated by forces of the People’s Republic Army. It was a defeat which shocked an otherwise disinterested and distant nation. In The Coldest Winter, award-winning reporter and historian David Halberstam explodes this moment in time, using it as

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

Annie Jacobsen · 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,

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles & Their Secret World War

Stephen Kinzer · 409 pages

A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into foreign adventures that decisively shaped today's world as the Cold War was at its peak.

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace

Peter Janney, Dick Russell

Vietnam: A History

Stanley Karnow · 768 pages

Examines American involvement in the Vietnam War, delves into the decisionmaking process in Washington and Asia, and presents interviews with participants on both sides.

JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy

L. Fletcher Prouty · 366 pages

Millions have been gripped by Oliver Stone's film JFK and its premise that the plot to assassinate Kennedy originated beyond the highest levels of the U.S. government. In the movie, the advocate of this theory is a character named "X" played by Donald Sutherland, who, as the film's "Deep Throat," explains how and why this plot came about. As Stone acknowledged, "X" not only was faithfully depicted

The File: A Personal History

Timothy Garton Ash · 256 pages

In 1978, fresh out of Oxford, Timothy Garton Ash set out for Berlin to see what he could learn from the divided city about freedom and despotism. As he moved from west to east - from Berlin glamour to Berlin danger - the East German secret police, the so-called Stasi, was compiling a secret file on his activities, monitoring his Berlin days and nights and tracking his growing involvement with the

Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion

Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain · 384 pages

Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age

Matthew Brzezinski · 336 pages

The behind-the-scenes story of the fierce battles on earth that launched the superpowers into space. Khrushchev was frustrated at America's U-2 spy plane, which flew too high to be shot down. But Russia's chief rocket designer, had an answer: an artificial satellite that would orbit the earth and cross American skies at will. The launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, stunned the world. Sputnik set

The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book

Peter Finn, Petra Couvee

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

David Talbot · 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

The Korean War

Max Hastings · 427 pages

It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. Now Max Hastings, preeminent military historian, takes us back to the bloody, bitter, struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950. Using personal accounts from interviews with more than 200 vets - including the Chinese - Hasting follows real off

The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour

Andrei Cherny · 640 pages

This book is the masterfully told story of the unlikely men who came together to make the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history. Author Cherny brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved mil

America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975

George C. Herring · 354 pages

The author portrays American participation in the Vietnam War as the logical culmination of the containment policy that began under Harry Truman in the late 1940's. Also his portrayal of the complex challenge that Vietnam posed for the United States and the varied responses it evoked from American people & leaders.

The Korean War: A History

Bruce Cumings · 288 pages

As Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight filled with untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, massacres and atrocities. He incisively ties America's current foreign policy back to this remarkably violent war that killed as many as four million Koreans, two thirds of whom were civilians.

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

Michael Dobbs · 464 pages

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days, veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reveals just how close we came to Armageddon.Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the

Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

Giles Milton

The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive & the Secret History of the KGB

Christopher M. Andrew, Vasili Mitrokhin · 700 pages