Books like Directorate S by Steve Coll

A comprehensive nonfiction narrative tracing the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, al‑Qaida, and U.S. intelligence failures leading to the 9/11 attacks.

A biography of Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet double‑agent who, while working undercover in the KGB, supplied MI6 with critical intelligence that accelerated the collapse of the Cold War.

A frontline chronicle of the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, told through the eyes of New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins.

Commander of the CIA and NSA Michael Hayden tells the inside story of America’s intelligence wars, detailing how his "play to the edge" philosophy shaped the nation’s response to terrorism, technology and surveillance.

Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens charts the rise of an immigrant Yemeni family to wealth and influence in Saudi Arabia, and their complex relationship with the kingdom that shaped the controversial legacy of Osama bin Laden.

"The shocking story of how America became one of the world's safest postwar havens for Nazis. Until recently, historians believed America gave asylum only to key Nazi scientists after World War II, along with some less famous perpetrators who managed to sneak in and who eventually were exposed by Nazi hunters. But the truth is much worse, and has been covered up for decades: the CIA and FBI brought thousands of perpetrators to America as possible assets against their new Cold War enemies. When the Justice Department finally investigated and learned the truth, the results were classified and buried. Using the dramatic story of one former perpetrator who settled in New Jersey, conned the CIA into hiring him, and begged for the agency's support when his wartime identity emerged, Eric Lichtblau tells the full, shocking story of how America became a refuge for hundreds of postwar Nazis"--

Robert Baer, renowned CIA operative, balances a career in the Middle East with a strained marriage and paternity, while his wife Dayna evolves from a California girl to a seasoned intelligence officer facing the personal costs of espionage.

In "America's Great Game," Hugh Wilford uncovers how the CIA’s early Arabists—Kermit and Archie Roosevelt and Miles Copeland—shaped U.S.–Middle East relations through covert operations, coups, and propaganda in the 1940s and 1950s.

After 9/11, a college freshman turns to public service, training with the CIA and spending a decisive period in Afghanistan, where he confronts the early years of the War on Terror.

An account of the transformation of the CIA and America's special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world's dark spaces: the new American way of war.

"Eleven powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker recall the path terror in the Middle East has taken from a more peaceful time in 1990s Israel to the recent beheadings of reporters by ISIS.With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how Al Qaeda and its core cult-like beliefs have morphed and spread. They include: a picture of Saudi Arabia under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, then compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; Israel and Hamas waging war over Gaza. Others continue to look into Al-Qaeda as it forms a master plan for its future, experiences a rebellion from within the organization, and spins off a growing web of terror in the world. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and a head of the CIA. It ends with the recent devastating capture and beheadings by ISIS of four American journalists and how our government handled the situation"--

CIA operative Mitch Rapp races against time to recover stolen top‑secret data, after the thief is killed yet still controls the information from beyond the grave.