Reviews, Forthcoming, New Releases, Overlooked
Olivier Assayas
2019
Based on the book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War by Fernando Morais, this spy thriller is based on the true story of The Cuban Five, spies sent by Cuba to infiltrate anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in the United States. Stars Penelope Cruz.
Edited by Magda Long, Rory Cormac
Georgetown University Press, 03 Nov 25
"Covert action" is generally understood as politically motivated and plausibly deniable interference by one state in the affairs of another state. It includes propaganda, political or economic subversion, paramilitary action, and assassinations. Covert action is the most consequential and controversial form of secret statecraft, and it has become a ubiquitous feature of international politics. However, it is often sensationalized or seen through a narrow, US-centric lens.
Covert Action challenges this conventional narrative and redefines secret statecraft by offering a groundbreaking comparative international perspective that explores the practice of unacknowledged intervention across twenty countries and a range of eras. Bringing together leading scholars from around the world, this volume moves beyond the American, and wider, anglosphere perspectives to examine covert action practices across states, regime types, and time.
This book will be important reading for historians, political scientists, and policymakers, and it provides a foundational study of the hidden mechanisms of international power. It takes a global perspective and thus transforms the understanding of how nations truly interact behind the scenes, revealing covert action as a complex form of international statecraft.
Charlie English
Random House, 01 Jul 25
For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the war was fought psychologically. It was a battle for hearts, minds, and intellects. Few understood this more clearly than George Minden, head of a covert intelligence operation known as the “CIA book program,” which aimed to undermine Soviet censorship and inspire revolt by offering different visions of thought and culture.
From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s “book club” secretly sent ten million banned titles into the East. Volumes were smuggled aboard trucks and yachts, dropped from balloons, hidden aboard trains, and stowed in travelers’ luggage. Nowhere were the books welcomed more warmly than in Poland, where they would circulate covertly among circles of like-minded readers, quietly making the case against Soviet communism. Such was the demand for Minden’s texts that dissidents began to reproduce them in the underground. By the late 1980s, illicit literature was so pervasive in Poland that censorship broke down: the Iron Curtain soon followed.
Charlie English narrates this tale of Cold War spycraft, smuggling, and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who fought for intellectual freedom—people like Mirosław Chojecki, who suffered beatings, imprisonment, and exile in pursuit of his clandestine mission. The CIA Book Club is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free.
In this collection, Alexander Rose, author of Washington's Spies, present six essays covering the two World Wars. In Part 1, we accompany a team of American soldiers as they embark upon an unsanctioned mission to kidnap Kaiser Wilhelm II in the aftermath of World War One; then we meet Imperial Germany's most obscure spy, the woman who trained Mata Hari in tradecraft; and finally, we investigate the so-called "Greatest Spy of World War One" to separate myth from reality.
In Part 2, we're introduced to Louis de Wohl, a colorful British agent who employed "Astrological Intelligence" to foretell Hitler's death; and then visit the Polish Underground and its asset, Agent Knopf, a mole burrowed deep within Hitler's High Command; and afterwards relate the unpalatable story of a Nazi intelligence-peddler, fake spy, and c
Jason Hanson
Tarcher Parigee, 22 Sep 15
When Jason Hanson joined the CIA in 2003, he never imagined that the same tactics he used as a CIA officer for counter intelligence, surveillance, and protecting agency personnel would prove to be essential in every day civilian life.
In addition to escaping handcuffs, picking locks, and spotting when someone is telling a lie, he can improvise a self-defense weapon, pack a perfect emergency kit, and disappear off the grid if necessary. He has also honed his “positive awareness”—a heightened sense of his surroundings that allows him to spot suspicious and potentially dangerous behavior—on the street, in a taxi, at the airport, when dining out, or in any other situation.
In his engaging and empowering book Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life, Jason shares this know-how with readers, revealing how to:
With the skill of a trained operative and the relatability of a suburban dad, Jason Hanson brings his top-level training to everyday Americans in this must-have guide to staying safe in an increasingly dangerous world.