John Marks is co-author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, a New York Times best-seller in hard-cover and paperback. He has written for the Washington Post, New York Times, Playboy, Foreign Policy, and Rolling Stone. He was the founder and long-time President of Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest peacebuilding organization that was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
By John D. Marks
A "Manchurian Candidate" would be an unwitting assassin brainwashed and programmed to kill. In this award-winning book, I document in highly readable terms the explosive story of MKULTRA, the CIA's highly secret program of experiments in mind control. I worked from thousands of pages of CIA documents as well as extensive interviews and research in the behavioral science to produce a book that, in the words of the late Senator Edward Kennedy "accomplished what two Senate committees could not."
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By Thomas Powers
This is a great book about former CIA Director Richard Helms and the agency he directed. Helms was the quintessential CIA man, and Powers tells the story of his 30-year career in spying in this beautifully written book, which somehow captures both Helms’ elusiveness and his essence.
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By George Packer
Dick Holbrooke was a one-of-a-kind diplomat who, by force of his character, brought peace to Bosnia. He embodied still significant, but declining, American power in the post-Vietnam era, and this book brilliantly captures his character and his exploits.
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By Graham Greene
This classic novel is the book I read before leaving for Vietnam as a young Foreign Service Officer. Written in 1955, it foretold in hugely insightful terms the quagmire in which the United States would sink into. It demonstrated the reasons why Americans have done so badly in combatting insurgencies.
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By Neil Sheehan
As both a military officer and a civilian leader of the pacification program, John Vann personified American involvement – and failure – in Vietnam. In my view, this is the definitive book on the War. If you only are going to read one book on Vietnam, this is the one I would choose.
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By Seymour M. Hersh
Sy Hersh is far and away the best investigative reporter of the last 50 years. This book tells how he got the stories that became some of the biggest national security scandals of our time – from My Lai to Watergate to CIA domestic spying to Abu Ghraib. This is essential reading for anyone interested in either or both journalism or national security.
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