BOOK REVIEWS & RECOMMENDATIONS — Welcome to our annual holiday book review and recommendations list, where we highlight some of the terrific books that have been reviewed and featured in The Cipher Brief in recent months. Since our summer newsletter, we’ve covered and reviewed more than 35 books – often sliced and diced by world-class subject matter experts. In this newsletter, we’ve singled out about a dozen that received our highest four out of four “trench coat” rating. As always, the books reviewed in The Cipher Brief represent an eclectic mix of topics ranging from the history of past wars to the prospects of future ones. We’ve included both fiction and non-fiction faves.

FICTION FAVORITES:

Tops on many folks’ list is The Persian: A Novel by veteran CIA analyst David McCloskey. For this one, we turned once again to Joe Zacks, a veteran of four-plus decades of government service, to offer his take. Zacks writes that The Persian may be the finest of McCloskey’s four spy novels to date (high praise given how well the first three were received). For this one, Zacks calls McCloskey’s novel “a sophisticated and multidimensional depiction of human nature and the motivations that propel people to action. It brings the HUMINT discipline to life, vividly portraying how a sophisticated intelligence service identifies, targets, and ultimately recruits and handles an agent while plumbing the depths of the agent’s psyche and inner conflicts.” To learn even more about the book – and its author – Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly did a debrief with McCloskey in this fun-filled Cover Stories podcast.

To review veteran spy novelist Daniel Silva’s 25^th book, An Inside Job, we turned to a couple of CIA veterans – Anne and Jay Gruner. The latest Silva book brings back skilled art restorer and former Mossad chief Gabriel Allon, in a fast-paced tale involving art theft, European crime and corruption – and a newly elected Pope. The Gruners’ review declares that Silva has once again demonstrated that he is a master of his craft.

While Gabriel Allon, the hero of Silva’s novel, is a fictional former Mossad officer, a genuine Mossad alumni, Yariv Inbar, is also a prolific novelist. His latest book, Behind the Trigger, was reviewed for us by Dr. Ken Dekleva, a novelist in his own right and a former Regional Medical Officer/Psychiatrist for the State Department. With that background, Dekleva was quick to spot Inbar’s skill in describing the human, emotional, and psychological aspects of espionage. The book features two central female characters and a Middle East canvas.

Not all of the novels that won plaudits on The Cipher Brief came from long-time authors. There was the thriller The Moldavian Gambit by first-time novelist Brad Meslin about a man-portable nuclear device that goes missing at the time the Soviet Union was coming apart in the early 1990s and may have fallen into the hands of a terrorist — and possibly smuggled into Paris. We asked James Lawler, a former CIA officer with deep experience in thwarting rogue state weapons proliferators and the author of several well-received novels himself to review it. Lawler gave Meslin high marks for technical accuracy and heart-stopping story telling. Meslin also joined us on a Cover Stories podcast to discuss what inspired him to write the novel and his sources and methods for keeping readers on the edge of their seats.

THE NON-FICTION BOOKS THAT ROCKED CIPHER BRIEF REVIEWERS:

With Latin American counternarcotics operations much in the news, a timely read is After Escobar: Taking Down the Notorious Cali Godfathers and the Biggest Drug Cartel in History reviewed by veteran government lawyer Terence Check. Written by former DEA agents Chris Feistl and Dave Mitchell with an assist from Jessica Balboni, the book tells the two-year saga in the mid-1990s of the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of the leading “godfathers” of the Cali drug cartel (aka “Cocaine, Inc.”) one of the biggest multi-billion-dollar drug trafficking enterprises of all time. In his review, Check writes that After Escobar “is really a story about diplomacy, and the power it has as a force multiplier for our law enforcement and military….(showing) the reader the importance of the diplomatic cadre in helping to bring down the Cali Cartel by doing the hard work of negotiating with the Colombian government.”

The criticality of diplomacy was at the forefront of another book this fall. Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger by A. Wess Mitchell. The book was reviewed for The Cipher Brief by retired U.S. Ambassador Gary Grappo. In his review Grappo describes the book as “part history lesson and part instruction manual for national leaders and diplomats, reprising the tactics, strategies, methods and actions of previous major state leaders and diplomats who found themselves confronting similar great power contests.” Grappo lauds the book for being a: “resounding reaffirmation of the value and importance of diplomacy as an indispensable component of national power not just in the past but even more so today. The skills of its practitioners may need rejuvenating. But there is no denying that diplomacy ultimately holds solutions to the problems of today.”

Several books we will highlight here offer fresh looks at past history. Let’s start with one from Yale University Press: No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One. The book was written by Andrew Lambert and one of our most prolific reviewers, Jean-Thomas Nicole, a Policy Advisor with Public Safety Canada, reviewed it. Nicole praised the book for its reminder of “the enduring utility of maritime power, the virtues of restraint, and the necessity of maintaining influence without overreach.” Nicole notes that these themes resonate strongly with today’s global challenges.

World War II and the events that led up to and followed it are often good fodder for books. Among those that stood out for us this year was “The Spy and the Devil” by Cipher Brief expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey. Journalist and author Michael Smith reviewed it for us and called it “one of the greatest untold stories of the Second World War intelligence.” It is the story of a Lithuanian-born ‘Baltic-German’ who ended up working for British intelligence and managed to penetrate the highest Nazi circles prior to the war including having several meetings with Adolf Hitler himself. Willasey-Wilsey also joined us on a Cipher Brief Cover Stories podcast to talk about this remarkable story.

In October, we published a review of The Traitor’s Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany – and the Spy Who Betrayed Them by Jonathan Freedland. Australian writer Susan Gorgioski reviewed it and told us the book reads like a detective novel but tells the real story of a “little-known group of opponents to the Nazi regime in Germany who were willing to sacrifice careers, social position, money, and ultimately for some, their lives.”

And then there was Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan by Richard Overy and reviewed by former senior CIA clandestine service officer (and Cipher Brief expert) Sonya Seunghye Lim. In her review, Lim praises Rain of Ruin for being a “thought-provoking and disturbing book” and its explanation for “why armed conflicts will continue to plague the world: dehumanizing the enemy, depersonalizing killings by making attacks as remote as possible, and glamorizing combat serve to palliate our collective conscience and to justify the persistence of jingoism.”

But not all the good stuff came from ancient history. CNN anchor Jake Tapper published a book in October called Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. So, we turned to someone with deep expertise – Joe Zacks who was just wrapping up a 42-year career – half in the Army and half as a CIA officer – and whose final post was Deputy Assistant Director of the CIA for Counterterrorism, to review it for us. Perfect credentials to evaluate Tapper’s book which Zacks describes as “ a mix of detective story and legal drama” about a six-year odyssey of tenacious federal prosecutors trying to bring an al Qaeda terrorist to justice.

Some of our best received books were about future intelligence challenges. For example, there is The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America by Anthony Vinci. We tapped Cipher Brief expert and principal with the Cyber Initiatives Group Glenn Gerstell to review that one for us. In his review, Gerstell describes the book as examining “the confluence of increasingly complex geopolitical challenges and of global technological advances” and tells us that the conclusion is that “America’s spy agencies must not merely adapt but also dominate this dynamic if we are to blunt (if not defeat) our adversaries.”

But no matter how good the technology is going forward, you’re gonna need people to make it all work right – and they need to be people who can get a security clearance. So, what do you need to know in order to try and do that? Fortunately, there’s a book for that. Trust Me: A Guide to Secrets: Who Gets Them and Why We Have Such a Mixed Track Record with Them by Lindy Kyzer. We trusted retired CIA Deputy Director for Analysis (and current Cipher Brief Expert) Linda Weissgold to review it. Weissgold is also a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC and says she now recommends the book to her students who want to understand the opaque yet crucial process of getting a security clearance. The book offers practical and philosophical advice that seeks to demystify the process.

While a little harder to give as holiday gifts, there are some podcasts interviews we highly recommend as well, including:

• A discussion with Marine and CIA ground branch veteran – and award-winning writer Elliot Ackerman discussing his latest novel Sheepdogs.
• A deep dive into North Korean matters with Ambassador Joe DeTrani on his memoir The North Korean Threat: Intelligence and Diplomacy.
• A discussion with journalist and Marine veteran Chas Henry about a devastating Pacific cyclone that triggered a horrendous fire at Marine Corps Base in Japan.
• And even a book by a publishing expert, Jane Friedman, who offers essential advice on how YOU can write your own book. Get her guide, The Business of Being a Writer, and maybe in a couple of years The Cipher Brief will be carrying a review of your book.

Before we go – we should note that some of our reviewers are really tough graders – and there are dozens of other books we’ve reviewed that came in with slightly under the four trench coat rating that we are certain you would enjoy. So, be sure to check out the complete list of reviews here.

Happy Holiday shopping and reading!

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