December 2022
BOOKS The Academic-Practitioner Divide in Intelligence Studies Edited by Ruben Arcos, Nicole K. Drumhiller and Mark Phythian Internationally, the profession of intelligence continues to develop and expand. So too does the academic field of intelligence, both in terms of intelligence as a focus for academic research and in terms of the delivery of university courses […]
November 2022
BOOKS Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master’s program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown’s […]
October 2022
BOOKS The CIA and the Pursuit of Security by Huw Dylan, David Gioe, Michael S. Goodman History, Documents and Contexts Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has been at the heart of America’s security apparatus. Written by intelligence scholars and experts, The CIA and the Pursuit of Security offers the reader a lively survey […]
September 2022
BOOKS The Girl from Guernica: An epic historical novel by Karen Robards On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s […]
August 2022
BOOKS Winter Work: A Novel by Dan Fesperman On a chilly early morning walk on the wooded outskirts of Berlin, Emil Grimm finds the body of his neighbor, a fellow Stasi officer named Lothar, with a gunshot wound to the temple and a pistol in his right hand. Despite appearances, Emil suspects murder. Meanwhile, CIA […]
July 2022
BOOKS Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A George Smiley Novel by John le Carré The man he knew as “Control” is dead, and the young Turks who forced him out now run the Circus. But George Smiley isn’t quite ready for retirement—especially when a pretty, would-be defector surfaces with a shocking accusation: a Soviet mole has […]
June 2022
BOOKS An Unlikely Spy by David Ricciardi Evelyn Varley has always been ambitious and clever. As a girl, she earned a scholarship to a prestigious academy well above her parents’ means, gaining her a best friend from one of England’s wealthiest families. In 1939, with an Oxford degree in hand and war looming, Evelyn finds […]
May 2022
BOOKS The Cover Wife: A Novel by Dan Fesperman When CIA agent Claire Saylor is told that she’ll be going undercover in Hamburg to pose as the wife of an academic who has published a controversial interpretation of the Quran’s promise to martyrs, she assumes the job is a punishment for past unorthodox behavior. But […]
April 2022
BOOKS Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff We all witnessed some of the most shocking and confounding political events of our lifetime: the careening last stage of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign, the president’s audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of January 6, the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. […]
March 2022
BOOKS Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response by Andy Slavitt “From former Biden Senior Advisor Andy Slavitt, Preventable is the definitive inside account of the United States’ failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Slavitt chronicles what he saw and how much could have been prevented […]