Intelligence History

The untold story of an Israeli spy’s epic journey to bring the notorious Butcher of Latvia to justice - a case that altered the fates of all ex-Nazis.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Gatekeepers, an “engaging…richly textured” (The New York Times), behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to run the world’s most powerful intelligence agency. “The best book about the CIA I’ve ever read…one hell of a story”...

Learn from some of the greatest thinkers in history. Study their patterns and stand on the shoulders of giants.

In 1940 Winston Churchill established the Special Operations Executive to "set Europe ablaze". Three years later David Smiley and Billy McLean were parachuted into Northern Greece and crossed the border into Albania to do just that. For the next eight months Smiley mediated between the competing resistance factions and organized them to conduct ambushes and acts of sabotage on fascist armies and infrastructure.

We are living in an age of conspiracy theories, whether it's an enduring, widely held belief such as government involvement in the Kennedy assassination, fears of a powerful infiltrating group, or modern fringe movements of varying popularity such as birtherism and trutherism. What is it in American culture that makes conspiracy theories proliferate? Who is targeted, and why? Are we in the heyday of the conspiracy theory, or is it in decline? American Conspiracy Theories is the first to use broad, long-term empirical data to analyze this popular American tendency.

From UFOs to Dr. Strangelove, LSD experiments to Richard Nixon, author Brian Brown investigates the paranoid, panicked history of the Cold War. In Someone Is Out to Get Us, Brian T. Brown explores the delusions, absurdities, and best-kept secrets of the Cold War, during which the United States...

Artificial intelligence surrounds us. More and more of the systems and services you interact with every day are based on AI technology. Most AI is narrowly specific; that is, it can only do a single thing, in a single context. Human intelligence is different. We can solve a variety of tasks, including those we have not seen before. In Artificial General Intelligence, Julian Togelius explores technical approaches to developing more general artificial intelligence and asks what general AI would mean for human civilization.

From the simple to the intricate and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the US nuclear program to predict sports results.

It was the deadliest terror campaign ever mounted against a nation in modern times: the al-Aqsa, or Second, Intifada. This is the untold story of how Israel fought back with an elite force of undercover operatives drawn from the nation's diverse backgrounds and ethnicities - and united in their ability to walk among the enemy as no one else dared.

This second book in the bestselling Forbidden Secrets series goes even deeper into the shocking, suppressed, and true stories of modern and ancient history—featuring classified military programs, secret weapons, unsolved scientific anomalies, and documented human experiments backed by evidence, sources, and historical records. From Cold War operations and CIA mind control to Nazi black ops, lost civilizations, and bizarre natural events, this book is a treasure trove of hidden knowledge.

A "powerful and indispensable" look at the devastating consequences of environmental racism (Gerald Markowitz) -- and what we can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities. Did you know... Middle-class African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in...

A fascinating examination of the world of private investigators by a 21st-century private eye. Today's world is complicated: companies are becoming more powerful than nations, the lines between public and corporate institutions grow murkier, and the internet is shredding our privacy. To combat...

THE MIGHTY MOO is the tale of how a scrappy little World War II aircraft carrier and its untested crew earned a distinguished combat record and beat incredible odds to earn 12 battle stars in the Pacific. The USS Cowpens and her crew weren’t your typical heroes. She was a flattop that the US...

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War – organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place – 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a...

AI poses a real and present danger. It contains the capacity to amplify social problems, drive a wedge further into our already-polarized society, and sow seeds of distrust in communities and personal relationships. When approached without a robust sense of human dignity,AI also threatens to undermine our self-understanding. To a degree beyond any previous technology, AI can make us forget ourselves. In this new era of AI, we must consciously make a choice: to stay human. In this book I provide a map and the tools for doing just that." (From the author, Joseph Vukov)

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon update our understanding of strategic warning intelligence analysis for the 21st century. Strategic warning - the process of long-range analysis to alert senior leaders to trending threats and opportunities that require action - is a critical intelligence function. It also is frequently misunderstood and underappreciated. The authors examine historical case studies, including postmortems of warning failures, to provide examples of the analytic points they make.

Robotics is slowly creeping into our lives, and soon, robots will be everywhere. Do you know everything there is to know about robotics? Do you want to know more about robotics? Do you want to discover the advantages of robotics? If so, then you've come to the right place.

A true story as exhilarating as a great spy thriller, as turbulent as today's headlines from the Middle East, A Time to Betray reveals what no other previous CIA operative's memoir possibly could: the inner workings of the notorious Revolutionary Guards of Iran, as witnessed by an Iranian man inside their ranks who spied for the American government.

From their birth in World War II as combat swimmers clearing the beaches of Normandy to their evolution into fighting men who could operate anywhere in the world by sea, air, or land, the intrepid story of the United States Navy SEALs is one of courage, sacrifice, and world-renowned toughness that echoes of other great military units of history - the Spartans, the Roman legions, or the samurai. Take a look inside to find out what makes the SEALs America's deadliest warriors.