The Cudahy New Book Shelf is currently featuring fiction and non-fiction books about the CIA.
Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner is an in-depth and comprehensive history of the CIA gleaned from interviews with former directors and servicemen as well as archival documents. Weiner does more than just recount facts; he critically examines the role and tactics of the agency after the September 11th attacks.
Moving from this arching overview of the agency to a highly personal account, you’ll also find Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, by Valerie Plame Wilson. Plame Wilson, whose CIA cover was famously blown by the White House in 2003, tells her side of the 
story previously commented on copiously by newspapermen and pundits.
The CIA is also rich territory for fiction writers, and so alongside the factual accounts are placed a work of fiction – An Ordinary Spy, by Joseph Weisberg. Weisberg, a former CIA officer himself, presents a fictional working portrait of the CIA and modern espionage set to the pace of a thriller.
