Book and Film Recommendations

Director: Katharina Otto-Bernstein | Documentary release date in US: 8 January 2026

A riveting portrait of 100-year-old CIA spymaster Peter Sichel. From escaping Nazi Germany as a Jewish refugee to becoming the first CIA Station chief in post-war Berlin and a key player in Cold War espionage.

Charles River Editors | Independently published | 11 May 2026

Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers. Since the war's start over 150 years ago, the battles have been subjected to endless debate among historians and the generals themselves. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would take four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it did, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the biggest battles ever since.

Though espionage is a hallmark of every major war, spies are often depicted in countless works of fiction as discovering secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane, as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own, it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous, not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction. Spies must hide in plain sight, and that is best achieved by being as innocuous as possible.

In September 1862, the Union had no intelligence service worthy of the name. It had detectives, scouts, scattered networks of informants, balloons, signal flags, and a great deal of luck, but the federal government did not have a coordinated system, to the extent that military commanders did not know enemy troop strength. In fact, McClellan spent most of his time in command of the Army of the Potomac dramatically overestimating the size of the Confederate army in front of him, and it would inform how he fought at Antietam on September 17, 1862. At that battle, McClellan believed Lee outnumbered him because his intelligence chief, Allan Pinkerton, had told him so.

Conversely, by the end of the war, the Union would be running the most sophisticated intelligence operations in American history to that point. The government eventually forged an integrated, all-source, professional service that fed the commanding generals daily reports on enemy strength, disposition, morale, and intent. The Union also successfully maintained a network of spies inside the Confederate capital that intercepted enemy signal traffic; read Southern newspapers for what the editors had let slip, and used escaped slaves as sources of intelligence and treated their testimony as it deserved to be treated. The man who built the Union’s intelligence apparatus, a New York lawyer named George Henry Sharpe, was almost completely unknown to the public during his lifetime and is almost completely unknown today. The service he built was disbanded the summer the war ended.

The story of how the Union Army went from the bumbling improvisation of 1861 to the professional craft of 1865, and back to nothing in 1866, has been told piece by piece in the histories of the war but has rarely been told whole. It is a story of inflated estimates and accidental discoveries, of slaves who walked into federal lines with maps in their heads, of Richmond spinsters who carried coded messages in hollow eggs, and of New York lawyers who learned on the job how to count the enemy. It is a story that, in places, mattered as much as battles in the field, but it a story that historians have rarely finished writing down.

Sienna P. Young | Avanturni Friends, LLC | 16 July 2025

In her debut adventure, 9-year-old Virginia (AKA Virgie), a young girl with dreams of becoming a world-class spy like her namesake, Virginia Hall, embarks on a high-stakes mission to track down a person of interest. Despite her rigorous training and careful planning, Virgie encounters setbacks, frustrations, and self-doubt similar to those experienced by real spies in the field. Armed with only her wits and a few household items, Virgie must solve complex problems, adapt to unexpected situations, and complete her mission, lest she face the consequences of mission failure.

Perfect for readers who love action, mystery, and adventure, OPERATION: How to Catch a Spy teaches important life lessons about resilience, resourcefulness, and the power of critical thinking.

Michelle Young | HarperOne | 13 May 2025

On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans’ final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the truth—a story that would mean nothing less than saving humanity’s cultural inheritance?

Based on troves of previously undiscovered documents, The Art Spy chronicles the brave actions of the key Resistance spy in the heart of the Nazi’s art looting headquarters in the French capital. A veritable female Monuments Man, Valland has, until now, been written out of the annals. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Valland, his undercover adversary, secretly worked to stop him. She came face to face with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, passed crucial information to the Resistance network, and faced death during the last hours of Liberation Day.

At the same time, a young Free French soldier, Alexandre Rosenberg , was fighting his way to Paris with the Allied forces battling to liberate France. Alexandre's father was the exclusive art dealer for Picasso, Matisse, George Braque, and Fernand Léger. The Nazis had taken everything from their family—their art collection, their nationality, their gallery, and their home in Paris.

Vivid and atmospheric, The Art Spy moves from the glittering days of pre-War Paris, home to geniuses of modern culture, including Picasso, Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, and Frida Kahlo, through the tension-riddled cities of Europe on the eve of war, to the harrowing years of the Nazi occupation of France when brave people such as Valland and Rosenberg risked everything to fight monstrous evil.

In the spirit of Hidden Figures, with the sweeping narrative of The Rape of Europa, The Art Spy is an inspiration for us all—an extraordinary tale of courage in a time of violence.