100 books like The Asset

No book exposed the horrors of Josef Stalin’s purges more graphically and with greater power than Robert Conquest’s epic, The Great Terror. The book chronicled how a paranoid Stalin, convinced his power was threatened by his rival Leon Trotsky and his allies, unleashed a wave of terror by his country’s NKVD—a forerunner of the KGB--  that decimated the Soviet leadership and its military with millions of Russians executed or marched to Siberian prison camps. While Stalin’s henchmen staged mock “trials” in Moscow, marked by phony confessions, extracted by torture, liberal apologists in the West sought to justify Stalin’s lunatic crackdown. I read this book in college and it has stayed with me for years-- providing an eye-opening lesson in the willingness of those of all political stripes to turn a blind eye to the evils of totalitarianism.

This was the first real effort to bring together a picture of the whole story of the global Communist movement and the many famines it created. It covers the whole-scale of the misery in regimes in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, Russia, India, China, and southeast Asia. It’s a lot of ground to cover but the narrative does not flag. Although the opening of the archives had produced more information, this is still a very impressive book however sobering it might be.

David Wise was the dean of American espionage writers, the author of more than a dozen well-regarded books about spies before his death in 2018, and Molehunt is my favorite. It tells the story of the James Angleton-inspired to hunt for a supposed mole within the CIA, an enormously damaging affair that paralyzed the agency for years. Wise’s books are so authoritative because of the unmatched sources he had in the intelligence community.

The Charm School was written at the height of the Cold War and is the story of a young American aspiring to drive a Pontiac Trans Am into and across Russia. After not many days of arduous travel—after all Russian roads and gasoline access points were not built for a Pontiac Trans Am muscle car of the 1960s—he accidentally comes across a Russian village unlike any he has seen thus far—a village far into the pinewoods that looked as if it had been plucked out of New England America with its residents speaking perfect American English free of Russian accents and filled with typical Americanisms. He knows he must reach the American Embassy in Moscow and alert the CIA station chief.  

Given the current state of affairs with Russia, there may not be a more informative book to read. The Charm School is simply the #1 spy novel ever written.… show more.

The book's subheading reads A Novel of the CIA. I would go further. This is ‘The Novel of the CIA,’ especially of the CIA between its founding and the early 1990s. It is a masterful combination of real and fictitious spies and covert operations.

The portrayal is so precise, the blending so seamless, that I found myself–and yes, I am supposedly an expert on this–double-checking whether certain operations had taken place. Nonfiction books on the CIA are one of my favorite things, but here, you experience the characters from much closer. I felt their desperation when operations collapsed, or agents were betrayed, or their elation after the rarer successes.

I felt the smoke in James Angleton’s room as he hunted for the missing mole; whether he managed to capture the mole or not will be for you to discover, but the book will stay with you both literally (it’s… show more.

Pete Earley, one of America’s best spy writers, authored two excellent books on espionage: Confessions of a Spy and Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring. But for my money, the Ames book is the better of them because Earley – one helluva reporter – talked his way into a long series of exclusive interviews with the disgraced CIA officer.

Ames, who betrayed to Moscow the identities of Russian spies secretly working for the U.S. (causing at least 10 of them to be killed), gave Earley more than 50 hours of his time behind bars. He did not race to print with the story (as other authors had), but interviewed Ames’s Russian handlers and the brilliant CIA team that identified him as the mole in its midst.

If you are looking for wild, off-the-charts international conspiracy thrillers, look no further. What makes me cling to this book is Thor’s imagination.

His premise is simple: What if the Soviet Union didn’t fall and the headlines to the contrary were all part of a plot by the Russian government to rebuild Russia and bring the United States to its knees by using the economic aid gifted to them by other world governments? Thor will make you believe that the absurd is possible. 

This is a gripping history of the Soviet female fighter, bomber and night bomber squadron pilots told through their interwoven biographies. These were the women who fought and died in the skies above Stalingrad and Kursk, and whose skills, as well as courage, astounded and terrified the Luftwaffe. Although invited to train and serve alongside their male comrades, the women were of course given uniforms and equipment designed for men, plenty of hostility, and a place, for those who survived, only at the back of the victory parades.

I chose this book as it explores the difficult, murky world of the double agent, that of Colonel Oleg Gordievsky of the KGB. I could have chosen any one of half a dozen of Ben’s books for great nonfiction writing. However, this story is set in a wonderful period for the espionage lover: the Cold War of the 1980s. A rollicking yarn that I think is one the best escape from Russia stories there is. I have to say this book constantly amazed me.

Indeed, I owe a debt to Ben, as his writing inspired me to write my own nonfiction espionage books, of which I have written four to date.

Another nonfiction and for me, the greatest book ever written on intelligence gathering. Unlike so many other books on espionage, it does not take place in the context of the Cold War but during the time of the struggle between Britain and Russia to control the passes of central Asia.

I loved how this book brought to life the stories of intelligence agents on both sides of the struggle, how they infiltrated hostile territories, won over warlords, and often lost their heads. The action took place before modern technology when agents relied on their powers of disguise, linguistic abilities, and their instinct to detect danger before it cost them their lives.

So much of what occurs in the great game explains the modern world today, which is why I believe this book is a must-read not only for those interested in espionage but international relations in general.