Book Review: The Great Game : The Myth and Reality of Espionage

The Great Game : The Myth and Reality of Espionage by Frederick P. Hitz should, quite frankly, be required reading for my forthcoming Age of Paranoia game. With wonderful chapters as recruitment, betrayal, counterintelligence and the like the author (who has extensive experience with the CIA as Inspector General) compares espionage fiction to the reality. Great stuff.

I got it from the library but now I want to buy a copy.

House of Bush, House of Sauds

I finally got around to reading House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Unger does a great job in explaining some very complicated issues, such as BCCI and the Carlyle group and the interconnections that arise from them between the Bush and Saud families. I personally wish he had felt less of a need to explain things like the 2000 election when it was relevant, but his material on how the Arab American vote probably got Bush the presidency was very enlightening. I'd recommend this one to just about anyone, though given how polarized political discourse is in this country there are probably a lot of people who wouldn't benefit from reading it.