Battle of Wits: Good Reads in Intelligence and Espionage Nonfiction for the Kindle Reader

From the Trojan Horse described in Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid to Operation Fortitude, a World War II Allied plan to deceive the Germans into thinking that the invasion of Europe on D-Day was to occur at the Pas-de-Calais rather than in Normandy, deception and trickery have marked all human conflicts. Books on real spies and real events can make for even more fascinating reading than James Bond or George Smiley thrillers. For the Kindle reader, some choice reads in intelligence and espionage nonfiction include:

A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars, by Nicholas Rankin. Oxford University Press, 2009. Print Length: 480 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (12 reviews). Kindle edition $5.42. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In February 1942, intelligence officer Victor Jones erected 150 tents behind British lines in North Africa. 'Hiding tanks in Bedouin tents was an old British trick,' writes Nicholas Rankin; German general Erwin Rommel not only knew of the ploy, but had copied it himself. Jones knew that Rommel knew. In fact, he counted on it - for these tents were empty. In A Genius for Deception, Rankin offers a lively and comprehensive history of how Britain bluffed, tricked, and spied its way to victory in two world wars. As he shows, a coherent program of strategic deception emerged in World War I, resting on the pillars of camouflage, propaganda, secret intelligence, and special forces. All forms of deception found an avid sponsor in Winston Churchill, who carried his enthusiasm for deceiving the enemy into World War II. Rankin vividly recounts such little-known episodes as the invention of camouflage by two French artist-soldiers, the creation of dummy airfields for the Germans to bomb during the Blitz, and the fabrication of an army that would supposedly invade Greece..." - Publisher.

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, by Ben Macintyre. Broadway, 2007. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (70 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service who at one time volunteered to assassinate Hitler for his countrymen. Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way..." - from the hardcover edition.

Enigma: The Battle for the Code, by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Print Length: 448 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (20 reviews). Kindle edition $9.34. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Winston Churchill called the cracking of the German Enigma code 'the secret weapon that won the war.' Now, for the first time, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the complete story of the breaking of the code by the Allies - the breakthrough that played a crucial role in the outcome of World War II. Until recently, most historians exclusively credited the brilliant mathematicians and professors at Bletchley Park - Britain’s famous World War II counterintelligence station - for breaking the elusive Enigma code. But as this spellbinding narrative recounts, while Bletchley stars such as Alan Turing and Harry Hinsley made outstanding contributions, the critical breaking of the code depended on the work of a much larger group of heroes, most of them unsung. Masterfully told and engagingly written, Enigma not only presents fascinating new details about the genesis of the code and the secret work at Bletchley but also tells the hair-raising stories of those who selflessly put their lives on the line to provide the codebreakers with the materials they needed..." - book flap.

Shadows in the Jungle: The Alamo Scouts Behind Japanese Lines in World War II, by Larry Alexander. NAL, 2009. Print Length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Determined to retake the Philippines ever since his ignominious flight from the islands in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur organized a first- rate intelligence-gathering unit. They were called the Alamo Scouts. Larry Alexander follows the men who made up the elite recon unit that served as General MacArthur's eyes and ears in the Pacific War. Drawing from personal interviews and testimonies from Scout veterans, Alexander weaves together the tales of the individual Scouts, who often spent weeks behind enemy lines to complete their missions..." - Publisher.

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi, by Neal Bascomb. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print Length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (73 reviews). Kindle edition $8.61. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"When the Allies stormed Berlin in 1945, Adolf Eichmann, the operational manager of the Final Solution, shed his SS uniform and vanished. Bringing him to justice would require a harrowing fifteen-year chase stretching from war-ravaged Europe to the shores of Argentina. Hunting Eichmann follows the Nazi as he escapes two American POW camps, hides out in the mountains, slips out of Europe on the ratlines, and builds an anonymous life in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, concentration camp survivor Simon Wiesenthal’s persistent search for the monster gradually evolves into an international manhunt that involves the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle. Presented in a pulse-pounding, hour-by-hour account, the capture of Eichmann and efforts by Israeli agents to smuggle him out of Argentina to stand trial bring the narrative to a stunning conclusion. Based on groundbreaking new information and interviews, recently declassified documents, and meticulous research..." - Publisher.

Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, by Alexander Rose. Bantam, 2007. Print Length: 384 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (28 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"...historian Alexander Rose brings to life the true story of the spy ring that helped America win the Revolutionary War. For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and deep into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed men who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors - including the spymaster at the heart of it all. In the summer of 1778, with the war poised to turn in his favor, General George Washington desperately needed to know where the British would strike next. To that end, he unleashed his secret weapon: an unlikely ring of spies in New York charged with discovering the enemy’s battle plans and military strategy. Washington’s small band included a young Quaker torn between political principle and family loyalty, a swashbuckling sailor addicted to the perils of espionage, a hard-drinking barkeep, a Yale-educated cavalryman and friend of the doomed Nathan Hale, and a peaceful, sickly farmer who begged Washington to let him retire but who always came through in the end..." - Publisher.

Operation Mincemeat, by Ben Macintyre. Crown, 2010. Print Length: 432 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (18 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated - Operation Mincemeat. The purpose? To deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose. Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different. Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were the perfect team and created an ingenious plan: Get a corpse, equip it with secret (but false and misleading) papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would, they hoped, take the bait..." - Publisher.

Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China, by David Wise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Print Length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (25 reviews). Kindle edition $12.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"For decades, while America obsessed over Soviet spies, China quietly penetrated the highest levels of government. Now, for the first time, based on numerous interviews with key insiders at the FBI and CIA as well as with Chinese agents and people close to them, David Wise tells the full story of China’s many victories and defeats in its American spy wars. Two key cases interweave throughout: Katrina Leung, code-named Parlor Maid, worked for the FBI for years, even after she became a secret double agent for China, aided by love affairs with both of her FBI handlers. Here, too, is the inside story of the case, code-named Tiger Trap, of a key Chinese-American scientist suspected of stealing nuclear weapons secrets. These two cases led to many others, involving famous names from Wen Ho Lee to Richard Nixon, stunning national security leaks, and sophisticated cyberspying..." - Publisher.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.


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