The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

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

The Zimmermann Telegram

Barbara W. Tuchman · 244 pages

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

Antonio J. Mendez, Matt Baglio · 314 pages

This is a true story of secret identities and international intrigue; it is the gripping account of the history making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage. It relates the true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran. On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day orde

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 Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

James D. Bradley · 387 pages

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.In 2005, a centu

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

James Barr · 464 pages

Embers Of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

Fredrik Logevall · 839 pages

A history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.

Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

Julian Sancton · 384 pages

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia

Janet Wallach · 419 pages

Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. T

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 Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Studies in North American Indian History)

Richard White · 544 pages

This book seeks to step outside the simple stories of Indian/white relations--stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible worl

The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America

Colin G. Calloway · 219 pages

In February 1763, Britain, Spain, and France signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War. In this one document, more American territory changed hands than in any treaty before or since. As the great historian Francis Parkman wrote, "half a continent...changed hands at the scratch of a pen." As Colin Calloway reveals in this superb history, the Treaty set in motion a cascade of une

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

Ben Macintyre · 364 pages

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

David Crist · 638 pages

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

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 Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Ned Blackhawk · 596 pages

1776

David McCullough · 393 pages

In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based

One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

Tom Segev · 612 pages

A New York Times Editor's Choice Best Book and a recipient of he National Jewish Book Award. One Palestine, Complete explores the tumultuous era of the British Mandate (1917 to 1948). Drawing on untapped archival materials, the internationally acclaimed historian Tom Segev reconstructs the period before the creation of the state of Israel --- a time of limitless possibilities and tragic missteps,

The Chinese Opium Question in British Opinion and Action

Wenzao Wu · 196 pages

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild · 375 pages

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.

The Arabs: A History

Eugene Rogan · 553 pages

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

Alex von Tunzelmann · 440 pages

"The stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947 liberated 400 million Indians from the British Empire. One of the defining moments of world history had been brought about by a tiny number of people, including Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery prime minister-to-be; Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation; and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous but unlikely couple who had been dispatched to

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

Whitney Alyse Webb · 544 pages