79 Books Like The Man Who Kept the Secrets

Another classic—this one, from 1955, which was twice made into a movie, in 1958 and in the superior 2002 remake, with Brendan Frazier and Michael Cain. The Quiet American is described as many things—as a Vietnam war book, as a critique of American imperialist impulses. But at heart, it’s the story of a love triangle.

And the woman at the center of the love triangle, Phuong, is an all-time favorite character of mine. With watchful attention and subtle silences, she dictates the fate of the two men. More important than anything we ever see her say are the things we see her do and not do. 

I love the novel’s spare prose and its observations and asides, which are astute and oftentimes quite funny. And in the book’s pages, Vietnam, in the years just before the disastrous French then American wars, comes vividly to life. But Phuong is the reason… show more.

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.

I recommended this book as it shows the mistakes that were made in the conduct of the Vietnam War from a military perspective and strategy. While I served in Vietnam, I could not understand some of the things we were asked and told to do.

This book shed new light on those orders and how those orders contributed to the end results of the war. I found it amazing that one man had the answers and yet was ignored by so many. I found it disturbing common sense threatened senior officers egos and the results were a war that America would be saddled with for ten years and countless lost lives. 

I’ve read a lot of journalism memoirs, but I love this one because it is unapologetically a book for journalism junkies. Hersh—arguably the greatest investigative reporter of the past century—is matter-of-fact and unsentimental as he looks back on his impressive career.

It’s all about the work: the incredible lengths to which you need to go to expose the damaging secrets that powerful people want to keep hidden. Reading his account of how he got the story of the My Lai Massacre, my jaw was open the entire time in near-disbelief. 

The first of a two-book series by accomplished historian Richard Dolan, this volume explores a bizarre and mystifying phenomenon that has fascinated me since I was a young boy, and later inspired me to write my own sci-fi thriller. In his book, Dolan proves beyond doubt that the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the USAF held a far deeper interest in the subject than publicly stated, an interest that often bordered on fear when mysterious, intelligently controlled aircraft violated US-restricted airspace at will. And continue to do so. Well-researched and meticulously referenced, Dolan’s series should be enough to convince the die-hard sceptics that whatever is travelling across our skies, it is beyond our current understanding. 

I read The Mission because it opened my eyes to the real story behind the headlines.

Weiner takes you inside CIA missions from the 21st century and shows what was happening behind the curtain while the public only saw the surface.

I was struck by how different the secret history looks compared to the official version. He makes you feel like you’re finally getting the account that no one saw at the time. For me, that transparency is incredibly powerful.

John Ranelagh’s history of the CIA should be the very first book read on U.S. espionage. At 800 pages, heavily grounded in interviews, it covers the period from before the Second World War to the mid-1980s. It convincingly overturns every misconception about the CIA, including its exaggerated roles in coups, assassinations, and the Phoenix Program.

Actually, the book is a detailed sociological study of the U.S. elite, Presidential governance, and intra-agency biases. Surprisingly, with its foundation in the O.S.S. and recruits from American communists who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, the CIA is a highly professional but liberal institution, sometimes stubbornly out of alignment with the establishment, such as over Vietnam. 

CIA officer Frank Snepp was one of the last American officials to leave Vietnam in 1975. But when he published a damning critique of the U.S. war effort in a book (A Decent Interval), it ignited a controversy that was widely covered in the press and led all the way to the Supreme Court. Snepp was charged with causing 'irreparable harm' to national security and ordered to surrender all profits from the publication. His account of the events around the court case are of course subjective but nonetheless speaks to a central paradox around the first amendment: freedom of speech is essentially suspended for national security officials. The legacy of Snepp’s case continues to cast a long shadow, affecting individuals as varied as Edward Snowden and John Bolton in our day.

Is this the best book on the Agency, probably not. Is this a full history? No again. But it is the first book I bought and read on the Agency, and it kickstarted my passion for secrecy and covert action. I found the account, perhaps, a bit biased. There aren’t only failures in the history of the CIA, but the failures sure are many, and Weiner portrays them with accuracy and flair. The degree of access to participants is also exceptional, and I was drawn immediately into the Agency schemes.

How many failures can an Agency take? How can we reconcile secrecy with a democratic society? After reading the book, I felt like I did not have all the answers, but I certainly wanted to find out more. The book’s story ended in 2007, but a sequel is coming in 2025.

I fell in love with the main character, Loveday (no pun intended), in the first few pages. She’s strong and tough, like all spies should be, and sarcastic—which is so fun to read.

I love her motivation as a spy, but she does have one flaw: she's in love with another member of the team and has been keeping him off missions to keep him safe. This makes me like her even more because she wants to protect him. Overall, the action, explosions, love story between Loveday and Vale, and the spy world had me reading until the very end.

I can’t wait to jump into the next book in the series.