Book and Film Recommendations

David Omand
Viking, 29 Oct 20

Intelligence officers discern the truth. They gather information - often contradictory or incomplete - and, with it, they build the most accurate possible image of the world. With the stakes at their absolute highest, they must then decide what to do.

Roman Polanski
2019

In 1894, French Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young promising officer, is degraded for spying for Germany, wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, who is promoted to run the military counter-intelligence unit that tracked him down. But when Picquart discovers that secrets are still being handed over to the Germans, he is drawn into a dangerous labyrinth of deceit and corruption that threatens not just his honor but his life.

Aviva Guttmann
Cambridge University Press, 07 Aug 25

In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad's Operation Wrath of God. She reveals how, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism were hunted and killed by Mossad with active European cooperation. Through unique access to unredacted documents in the Club de Berne archive, she shows how a secret coalition of intelligence agencies supplied Mossad with information about Palestinians on a colossal scale and tacitly supported Israeli covert actions on European soil. These agencies helped to anticipate and thwart a number of Palestinian terrorist plots, including some revealed here for the first time. This extraordinary book reconstructs the hidden world of international intelligence, showing how this parallel order enabled state relations to be pursued independently of official foreign policy constraints or public scrutiny.  

Dexter Ingram
Amazon, 09 Jul 25

Behind every major world event lurks a shadow narrative. The "official story" you learned? That's the magician's trick designed to distract you from the real power players. Wars don't just happen. Revolutions aren't spontaneous. Technological breakthroughs rarely come from lone geniuses working in garages.

The backroom deals, the midnight defections, the calculated betrayals—these are what actually shape our world—not the polished versions fed to the public. Secrets cause nations to rise and fall.

The truth is always messier than fiction—and infinitely more disturbing.

Inside The Spy Archive: Hidden Lives, Secret Missions, and the History of Espionage, you'll learn about:

• The Gestapo torturer who should have been hanged at Nuremberg. Instead, he enjoyed 30 prosperous years in Bolivia. How many other Nazi criminals received new identities from Western intelligence agencies—and what were they expected to provide in return?

• In suburban America, a father and son casually passed envelopes that devastated U.S. naval security for eighteen years. What they sold to the Soviets for pocket change nearly triggered the nuclear war everyone feared.

• They vanished overnight in 1307. Or did they? Follow the money trail across 700 years and discover why certain banking families still use Templar symbols in their private communications. Coincidence? Hardly. 

Get a glimpse of the true stories they never taught you and learn how espionage actually changed the world.

Once you know what happened behind closed doors, history will never look the same again.