Book and Film Recommendations

John Landis
1985

Two low-level government employees, Emmitt Fitz-Hume (played by Chevy Chase) and Austin Milbarge (Dan Aykroyd), are chosen for a top-secret CIA mission. They are unsuitable as CIA agents but are deliberately chosen for this reason, as their mission is a decoy one and they are expendable. After being fast-tracked through training they are parachuted into Pakistan where all manner of adventures await them.

Christine Kuehn
Celadon Books, 25 Nov 25

It began with a letter from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. World War II. Nazi spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her seventy-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then wept. He knew this day would come.

The Kuehns, a prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times that had befallen them. When the daughter of the family, Eberhard’s sister, Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels at a party, the two hit it off, and they had an affair. But Ruth had a secret―she was half Jewish―and Goebbels found out. Rather than having Ruth killed, Goebbels instead sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii, to work as spies half a world away. There, Ruth and her parents established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles down the road from Pearl Harbor, shielding Eberhard from the truth. They passed secrets to the Japanese, leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. After Eberhard’s father was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the assault, Eberhard learned the harsh truth about his family and faced a decision that would change the path of the Kuehn family forever.

Jumping back and forth between Christine discovering her family’s secret and the untold past of the spies in Germany, Japan, and Hawaii, Family of Spies is fast-paced history at its finest and will rewrite the narrative of December 7, 1941.

Alexander Rose
Independently Published, 23 Oct 25

In this volume of Tales From the Secret World I delve into historical codes and ciphers. First we visit the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and take a sneak peek into his recently decrypted correspondence. Then we'll investigate the secret letters of Mary Queen of Scots and solve a few mysteries. Afterwards, there's a discussion of Musical Codes and why they aren't as common as you might think. Following that, we'll meet a Civil War spy who gamely struggled to master an overly complex cipher. And finally, there are two essays on World War Two: one that asks why the Germans never twigged that the Allies had broken their vaunted Enigma code; and the other, what the British gleaned about the Holocaust from intercepted German radio transmissions.

Charlotte Dennett
Chelsea Green Publishing, 02 Apr 2020

In 1947, Daniel Dennett, America’s sole master spy in the Middle East, was dispatched to Saudi Arabia to study the route of the proposed Trans-Arabian Pipeline. It would be his last assignment. A plane carrying him to Ethiopia went down, killing everyone on board. Today, Dennett is recognized by the CIA as a “Fallen Star” and an important figure in US intelligence history. Yet the true cause of his death remains clouded in secrecy.

In The Crash of Flight 3804, investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett digs into her father’s postwar counterintelligence work, which pitted him against America’s wartime allies―the British, French, and Russians―in a covert battle for geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East. Through stories and maps, she reveals how feverish competition among superpower intelligence networks, military, and Big Oil interests have fueled indiscriminate attacks and targeted killings that continue to this day―from Jamal Khashoggi’s murder to drone strikes. The book delivers an irrefutable indictment of these devastating forces and how the brutal violence they incite has shaped the Middle East and birthed an era of endless wars.

The Crash of Flight 3804 provides important context for understanding the region, while bringing new questions to the fore:

• To what lengths has the United States negotiated with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS to secure Big Oil’s holdings in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen?
• Was the Pentagon’s goal of defeating ISIS a fraudulent pretext for America’s occupation of Syrian eastern provinces and a land grab for oil?
• What part does Ukraine play in the energy-dominance struggle between the US and Russia?
• Did the infamous double agent Kim Philby, who worked for the British while secretly spying for the Russians, have anything to do with Dennett’s death?
• Why have the US and China made North Africa the next major battleground in the Great Game for Oil?

Part personal pilgrimage, part deft critique, Dennett’s insightful reportage examines what happens to international relations when oil wealth hangs in the balance and shines a glaring light on what so many have actually been dying for.