Books like Inside the Company — picked by fans

This book reads like a thriller. The first time I read it, I just couldn't put it down. And every time I reread it, as history unfolds in Latin America, I see how this classic book about the U.S. overthrow of the legitimately elected government in Guatemala in 1954 is actually describing the fundamental basis of intervention in the Cold War that laid the ground for so many of the region's dictatorship.

Bitter Fruit is a brilliant piece of investigation and a story well-told.

David Atlee Phillips played such a major role in covert ops in Latin America I had to make sure he appeared in my novel. After a long and successful CIA career, Phillips wrote this memoir of undercover derring-do. It reads like recruiting propaganda for the agency but what fascinated me was his frankness about the missions he ran and the methods he used. He was publisher of an English-language newspaper in Chile when the CIA recruited him in 1950. A natural storyteller, Phillips describes his undercover shenanigans in Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Brazil. By the 1970s he was at Langley HQ, in charge of all Western Hemisphere covert ops, including the actions (discreetly omitted in his memoir) leading to the coup in Chile.

I love it as a tale of heroism, youthful idealism, success, defeat, death over and over. I first read the final chapter of this book in an excerpt after which I ordered it immediately. I had been curious about the real story behind this highly intelligent icon. Disturbing and illuminating, this book shows how driven, outright murderous in the name of revolution, Che was and how this catapulted Fidel and the Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista. I had such empathy for Che as I read through his life that I couldn’t reread the final chapter about his brutal prolonged death.

The 1973 coup in Chile violently destroyed the freely elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende and installed the brutal 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. For years afterward suspicions swirled that the U.S. was behind the event. But evidence was largely anecdotal. What is so impressive about this book is Kornbluh’s persistence deploying the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of classified documents related to the coup. Kornbluh connects the dots and reveals the smoking guns. Through facsimiles of actual cables, telexes, and phone memos (many still highly redacted) this dossier allows you to draw your own conclusions about what really happened in Chile.

Intelligence expert, professor, and former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America, Dr. Brian Latell, offers insight into Cuban Intelligence and their—largely—successful infiltration of the US security apparatus. Based on interviews with high-level defectors, the book delves into Castro’s mindset with assassination plots and uncover operations emanating from both sides of the Florida Straits as well as a behind-the-scenes look at some key events of the Cold War.

It’s very interesting to learn more about Castro’s mindset beyond the news headlines and how he managed to maintain power after the revolution. However, the real bombshell is an anecdote given by a former Cuban radio operator during the 1960s. I won’t give anything away, but it certainly adds fodder to the JFK assassination, giving one something to think about without falling into a deluge of conspiracy theories. Compelling reading from a true expert in the area.

I love all aspects of the Spy Game, from the places, to books, to film, to the food, and (of course) the drinks, so where best to go to find that kind of info than in a great book like A Spy Walked Into A Bar…? 

I love the premise, the stories, and the how to make a drink. Put it all together, and you have not only a mixology but a captivating history of an “interesting” side of espionage.

Written by two senior CIA officers who know the business and what it takes to survive, which includes a cocktail once in a while. With this book, you can go into a bar and spot the spies or their targets… maybe.

Spy Tradecraft coupled with Spy Barcraft at its best. I’ll have a Talisker 18, double, straight up, in a cold glass, please!

Assassin Calypso was my favourite side character throughout the series, and in Black Heart, we finally get to meet her properly.

As part of her metamorphosis, she has to learn to trust others, which is perhaps her biggest challenge of all. There’s as much romance as suspense in this book, and former CIA agent Ian Black makes a worthy hero as he teams up with Calypso to right past wrongs. 

This book, about the CIA’s secret funding of art and culture in the Cold War battle for hearts and minds, caused a big stir on its publication in 2000. Written by a young British researcher, it scathingly criticized the Agency’s cultural operations (a source of some pride among intelligence veterans), arguing that they compromised and undermined the very artistic values they were supposed to defend. Several writers on the same subject since, myself included, have argued with aspects of her work, but Saunders’ research and storytelling are second to none. A harsh but hugely informative and entertaining account of one of the most intriguing chapters in the history of the Cold War.

Taking the story from the endgame of the Cold War to the dawn of the War on Terror is this extraordinary book on the rise of Islamist terrorism and the CIA’s efforts to defeat it prior to 9/11. Coll’s research, based on interviews with a vast range of senior officials, is dazzling, yet it never overwhelms a narrative that combines human interest and geopolitical sweep seamlessly. No less impressive is his accomplishment in documenting not just the U.S. and Afghan perspectives but the Saudi and Pakistani as well, all in the same painstaking detail. If this whets the appetite for more of the same, Coll’s Directorate S resumes his account of the intelligence wars in Afghanistan, providing necessary background to understanding the failure of the U.S. occupation there.

So, you’re a fan of history, science-fiction, and alternative history all in one? Love to read things that open your mind to new possibilities? Then Ageless is for you. Paul Inman weaves a tale of a hero’s origin story trapped in events they cannot escape from, all in settings and times students of history will recognize but with just enough changes to make this an alt-history story.

The non-linear presentation of the story enhances through its jarring shifts the experiences of all the characters. I don’t think you could tell this story in a linear fashion owing to how the author reveals the mysteries and delivers on the resolution in a romp through time and space you will not regret picking up.