Best Espionage True Accounts

Drawing on previously classified CIA documents and on interviews with firsthand participants, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting and a riveting true story of intrigue in the final years of the Cold War. What [Hoffman]’s accomplished here isn’t just a remarkable example of journalistic talent but also an ability to weave an absolutely gripping nonfiction narrative.” — The Dallas Morning News “This riveting drama. packs valuable insights into the final decade of the cloak-and-dagger rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Human tension hangs over every page of The Billion Dollar Spy like the smell of leaded gasoline. [Hoffman] knows the intelligence world well and has expertly used recently declassified documents to tell this unsettling and suspenseful story. Hoffman is a scrupulous, meticulous writer whose pages of footnotes and references attest to how carefully he sticks to his sources. “Hoffman viscerally evokes the secret, ruthless Cold War battle between the American Central Intelligence Agency and the Soviet KGB in his true-life espionage thriller. An exciting, revealing tale with a courageous, sympathetic protagonist.” — Tampa Bay Times “The fine first sentence of The Billion Dollar Spy could almost have been written with an icicle. A work of painstaking historical research that’s paced like a thriller.” — Departures “Hoffman [proves] that nonfiction can read like a John le Carré thriller. Hoffman’s revealing of [Adolf Tolkachev] as a person and a spy is brilliantly done, making this mesmerizing true story scary and thrilling.” — Booklist (starred review). “Hoffman ably navigates the many strands of this complex espionage story. “A fabulous read that also provides chilling insights into the Cold War spy game between Washington and Moscow that has erupted anew under Vladimir Putin. It is also an evocative portrait of everyday life in the crumbling Soviet Union and a meticulously researched guide to CIA sources and methods. I devoured every word, including the footnotes.” —Michael Dobbs, author of One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. This is a breakthrough book in intelligence writing, drawing on CIA operational cables—the holy grail of the spy world—to narrate each astonishing move. Hoffman reveals CIA tradecraft tricks that are more delicious than anything in a spy novel, and his command of the Soviet landscape is masterful. Full of twists so amazing you couldn’t make them up, this is spy fact that really is better than fiction.” —David Ignatius, author of The Director. It is a gripping story of courage, professionalism, and betrayal in the secret world.” —Rodric Braithwaite, British Ambassador in Moscow, 1988-1992. “A scrupulously researched work of history that is also a gripping thriller, The Billion Dollar Spy by David E. Hoffman is an unforgettable journey into Cold War espionage. This spellbinding story pulses with the dramatic tension of running an agent in Soviet-era Moscow—where the KGB is ubiquitous and CIA officers and Russian assets are prey.

Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War—while he was secretly working for the enemy. Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre’s best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling. But Ben Macintyre manages to retell it in a way that makes Philby’s destructive genius fresh and horridly fascinating.”— David Ignatius, Washington Post “ A Spy Among Friends is a rollicking book. Written with an historian’s fidelity to fact and a novelist’s eye for character, A Spy Among Friends is one terrific book.” — David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of Z “Ben Macintyre is one of the most gifted espionage writers around. With exquisite detail and masterful control, Macintyre unveils the dark and treacherous interior worlds in which spies live.” —Annie Jacobsen, author of Area 51 and Operation Paperclip “In this spellbinding account of friendship and betrayal, Ben Macintyre masterfully describes how the Cambridge-educated Kim Philby evaded justice by exploiting the incestuous snobbery of the British old-boy network, which refused to believe that one of its own could be a major Soviet spy. As riveting as Macintyre’s earlier books were, this searing portrait of Britain's ruling class is even better.” — Lynne Olson, bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days “Ben Macintyre has written a truly fabulous book about the "fabulous" Kim Philby—the suave, dedicated, and most intriguing spy of the entire Cold War era. Almost inadvertently, Ben Macintyre, a Times columnist, provides a devastating critique of the British class system and the disasters that result when people assume they know people… A Spy Among Friends is an extraordinary book about a sordid profession in which the most important attribute is the ability to lie…. Macintyre’s focus on friendship brings an intimacy to this book that is missing from the cardboard stereotypes that populate spy novels and conventional espionage histories…I’m not a lover of spy novels, yet I adored this book.” – The Times of London “ Macintyre writes with the diligence and insight of a journalist, and the panache of a born storyteller, concentrating on Philby's friendship with and betrayal of Elliott and of Angleton, his pathetically dedicated admirer at the top of the CIA. For both, the mask became indistinguishable from reality… A Spy Among Friends is not just an elegy, it is an unforgettable requiem.” – The Observer “Ben Macintyre’s bottomlessly fascinating new book is an exploration of Kim Philby’s friendships, particularly with Nicholas Elliott… Other books on Philby may have left one with a feeling of grudging respect, but A Spy Among Friends draws out his icy cold heart…This book consists of 300 pages; I would have been happy had it been three times as long.” – The Mail on Sunday “Such a summary does no justice to Macintyre's marvellously shrewd and detailed account of Philby's nefarious career. To read A Spy Among Friends is a bit like climbing aboard a runaway train in terms of speed and excitement – except that Macintyre knows exactly where he is going and is in total control of his material.” – The Daily Mail “Philby's story has been told many times before – both in biography and most notably in John le Carre's fictional masterpiece Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – but never in such exhaustive detail and with such panache as in Ben MacIntyre's brilliant, compulsive A Spy Among Friends … Reads like fiction, which is testament to the extraordinary power of the story itself but also to the skills of the storyteller…One of the best real-life spy stories one is ever likely to read.” – The Express “Ben Macintyre has written an engaging book on a tantalising and ultimately tragic subject.

Based on a trove of top secret documents and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, The Winter Fortress is an arresting chronicle of a brilliant scientist, a band of spies on skies, perilous survival in the wild, sacrifice for one’s country, Gestapo manhunts, soul-crushing setbacks, and a last-minute operation that would end any chance Hitler could obtain the atomic bomb—and alter the course of the war. A New York Times Espionage Bestseller "Weaving together his typically intense research and a riveting narrative, Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress is a spellbinding piece of historical writing." "Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress is a riveting, high-action World War II thriller with nothing less than the fate of Planet Earth on the line. In The Winter Fortress , Neal Bascomb brilliantly tells the extraordinary true story of arguably the most important and daring commando raid of WWII: how an amazing band of men on skis made sure Hitler never got to drop the ultimate bomb." “Brilliantly written, The Winter Fortress cinematically captures a commando team’s efforts to destroy one of the most important secret facilities in World War II. Bascomb’s riveting prose puts the reader into one of the more daring missions of the war and the Allies’ efforts to sabotage a crucial aspect of Germany's nuclear program. "This well-told and deeply researched account sheds light on an aspect of World War II that is little known or remembered, creating a valuable history that will be beneficial for most collections." "Bascomb, a WWII historian and former journalist, thrillingly recounts the commando effort to destroy the Norwegian Vemork hydroelectric plant . A fascinating read about how a small group of Norwegians refused to submit to the brutal occupation of their country and contributed significantly to Allied victory." Parts of the book read like an adventure novel, others like straightforward history, but the combination will appeal to readers of both WWII fiction and nonfiction." “Bascomb brings this overlooked tale of wartime nuclear sabotage to life while taking care to explain the science behind the story.”. -- Scientific American. .Bascomb interweaves the stories of Hitler’s ‘Uranium Club’ and of atomic chemist Leif Tronstad, who directed the Allied operation, with the thriller-esque tale of the commandos who put the plant out of action in 1943." "This tale of a daredevil mission to slow Germany’s World War II progress toward an atomic bomb could only be conjured by a master storyteller. Neal Bascomb’s a master all right, but the events he describes in fly-on-the-wall fashion—working from recently declassified documents, firsthand interviews and previously unseen diaries and letters—are true. It is as much a saga of adventure and survival in the mode of Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger as it is an account of wartime sabotage, secret agents and resistance fighters .

From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma, an explosive and shocking account of addiction and black tar heroin in the heartland of America. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America--addiction like no other the country has ever faced. “Over the last 15 years, he has filed the best dispatches about Mexican migration and its effects on the United States and Mexico, bar none.” ― Los Angeles Times Book Review. “Journalist Quinones weaves an extraordinary story, including the personal journeys of the addicted, the drug traffickers, law enforcement, and scores of families affected by the scourge, as he details the social, economic, and political forces that eventually destroyed communities in the American heartland and continues to have a resounding impact.” ―starred review, Booklist. “In Dreamland , former Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Quinones deftly recounts how a flood of prescription pain meds, along with black tar heroin from Nayarit, Mexico, transformed the once-vital blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, and other American communities into heartlands of addiction. With prose direct yet empathic, he interweaves the stories of Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics agents, and small-town folks whose lives were upended by the deluge of drugs, leaving them shaking their heads, wondering how they could possibly have resisted.” ― Mother Jones. “Smack is back in the news as heroin use spikes and busts pile up at the border, making Dreamland a timely book. But he also goes way deeper; he tells the social and human stories at the heart of the opiate trade and how it tortures the souls of America and Mexico.” ―Ioan Grillo, author of EL NARCO. “ Dreamland spreads out like a transnational episode of The Wire , alternately maddening, thrilling, depressing, and with writing as sharp and insightful as a razor blade. Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic is an intricate jigsaw puzzle piecing together his findings from intensive investigation of the unprecedented spread of heroin addiction throughout the United States over the past two decades . Dreamland stands as a model of meticulous investigative reporting providing important insights not only the current opiate epidemic but also into the sometimes negative symbiosis between our country and our neighbors to the south.” ― New York Journal of Books. "The path of heroin from America’s urban slums to its trim suburban subdivisions is traced by a Los Angeles Times reporter. Quinones’ deeply researched and readable book says well-heeled addicts got hooked first on pain-killing medications like OxyContin--but then switched to much cheaper Mexican heroin, feeding a problem across the nation." Using expert storytelling and exhaustive detail, Quinones chronicles the perfect storm of circumstances that cleared the way for the Mexican narcotic to infiltrate our small and midsize communities over the last two decades.” ― Kansas City Star. "You won’t find this story told better anywhere else, from the economic hollowing-out of the middle class to the greedy and reckless marketing of pharmaceutical opiates to the remarkable entrepreneurial industry of the residents of the obscure Mexican state of Nayarit . Quinones combines thorough research with superlative narrative skills to produce a horrifying but compulsively readable book about opiate addiction . Spanning the central U.S. and crossing the Mexican border, Dreamland adroitly unsnarls the tangled business that feeds a growing lust for chemical euphoria and relief.” ― Shelf Awareness. "[A] powerful investigation into the explosion of heroin abuse in suburban America that combines skillful reporting and strong research with a superb narrative."

Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller In the Garden of Beasts —intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel. It doesn’t hurt that this truth is stranger than fiction.” — The New York Times. “Another successful exploration of American history. Larson skillfully balances the grisly details with the far-reaching implications of the World’s Fair.” — USA Today. “As absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.” — San Francisco Chronicle. “Paints a dazzling picture of the Gilded Age and prefigure the American century to come.” — Entertainment Weekly.

A tragic suicide, a likely murder, wrongful imprisonment, and gripping courtroom scenes draw readers into this compelling story giving them a frightening perspective on justice corrupted and who should be accountable when evidence is withheld. The takeaway is that both Bushies and Obamaites should be very afraid: over the last few years, a coterie of vicious and unethical prosecutors who are unfit to practice law has been harbored within and enabled by the now ironically named Department of Justice.''. ''When you ve finished reading this fast-paced thriller, you will want to stand up and applaud Powell's courage in daring to shine light into the darkest recesses of America's justice system. ''I have covered hundreds of court cases over the years and have witnessed far too often the kind of duplicity and governmental heavy-handedness Ms. Powell describes in her well-written book, Licensed to Lie.''.

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. The Amazon Editors' Pick for the Best Book of 2017: In the 1920s, the Osage found themselves in a unique position among Native Americans tribes. As other tribal lands were parceled out in an effort by the government to encourage dissolution and assimilation of both lands and culture, the Osage negotiated to maintain the mineral rights for their corner of Oklahoma, creating a kind of “underground reservation.” It proved a savvy move; soon countless oil rigs punctured the dusty landscape, making the Osage very rich.

Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path.