“What are the best books about the CSI?” We looked at 255  of the top CSI books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

As a companion to our Best FBI Books article, below you can find the top 255 books about the CSI. The top 15 books, all appearing on 3 or more lists, are ranked below with images, descriptions, and links. The remaining 200+ titles, as well as the articles we used, are in alphabetical order on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top CSI Books Of All-Time

15 .) All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer

Lists It Appears On:

• Ranker
• Wikipedia
• Goodreads 2

With a thrilling narrative that sheds much light on recent events, this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the country’s elected prime minister, ushered in a quarter-century of brutal rule under the Shah, and stimulated the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and The Economist, it now features a new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran.

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14 .) First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan by Gary Schroen

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2
• CIA 2

“While America held its breath in the days immediately following 9/11, a small but determined group of CIA agents covertly began to change history. This is the riveting first-person account of the treacherous top-secret mission inside Afghanistan to set the stage for the defeat of the Taliban and launch the war on terror.

As thrilling as any novel, First In is a uniquely intimate look at a mission that began the U.S. retaliation against terrorism–and reclaimed the country of Afghanistan for its people.”

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13 .) Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

Lists It Appears On:

• Wikipedia
• Goodreads 2
• Boston Globe

With shocking revelations that made headlines in papers across the country, Pulitzer-Prize-winner Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security.

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12 .) The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service by Henry A. Crumpton

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads 2
• CIA 1
• Boston Globe

Revelatory and groundbreaking, The Art of Intelligence will change the way people view the CIA, domestic and foreign intelligence, and international terrorism. Henry A. “Hank” Crumpton, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, offers a thrilling account that delivers profound lessons about what it means to serve as an honorable spy. From CIA recruiting missions in Africa to pioneering new programs like the UAV Predator, from running post–9/11 missions in Afghanistan to heading up all clandestine CIA operations in the United States, Crumpton chronicles his role—in the battlefield and in the Oval Office—in transforming the way America wages war and sheds light on issues of domestic espionage.

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11 .) The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA by Thomas Powers

Lists It Appears On:

• Boston Globe
• The Washington Post
• CIA 2

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10 .) The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA by Evan Thomas

Lists It Appears On:

• CIA 2
• Boston Globe
• Goodreads 2

“The Very Best Men is the story of the CIA’s early days as told through the careers of four glamorous, daring, and idealistic men who ran covert operations for the government from the end of World War II to Vietnam. Evan Thomas re-creates the personal dramas and sometimes tragic lives of Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald, who risked everything to contain the Soviet threat.

Within the inner circles of Washington, they were regarded as the best and the brightest. They planned and acted to keep the country out of war—by stealth and “political action” and to do by cunning and sleight of hand what great armies could not, must not be allowed to do. In the end, they were too idealistic and too honorable, and were unsuited for the dark, duplicitous life of spying. Their hubris and naïveté led them astray, producing both sensational coups and spectacular blunders like the Bay of Pigs and the failed assassination attempts on foreign leaders in the early 1960s. Thomas draws on the CIA’s own secret histories, to which he has had exclusive access, as well as extensive interviews, to bring to life a crucial piece of American history.”

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9 .) The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

“The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.

This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.”

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8 .) Wilderness of Mirrors by David C. Martin

Lists It Appears On:

• CIA 1
• CIA 2
• The Washington Post

“At the dawn of the Cold War, the world’s most important intelligence agencies―the Soviet KGB, the American CIA, and the British MI6―appeared to have clear-cut roles and a sense of rising importance in their respective countries. But when Kim Philby, head of MI6’s Russian division and arguably the twenty-first century’s greatest spy, was revealed to be a Russian mole along with British government heavyweights Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, everything in the Western intelligence world turned upside down.

Here is the true story of how the American James Bond―the colorful, foulmouthed, pistol-packing, alcoholic ex-FBI agent William “King” Harvey―put the finger on Philby; how James Jesus Angleton, the chain-smoking poet of Yale University and the CIA’s supposed “master spy” in charge of counterintelligence, began his descent into a paranoid wilderness of mirrors upon learning of family friend Kim Philby’s ultimate betrayal; and the devastating consequences of the loss of MI6 prestige and the CIA’s subsequent self-defeating witch hunts.

Every revelation, every stranger-than-fiction twist and turn is all the more intriguing as truths become lies and unlikely scenarios are revealed as reality. With impeccable sourcing and the use of thousands of pages of declassified research, David C. Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors is widely recognized as a masterpiece of intelligence literature.”

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7 .) A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency by Richard Helms with William Hood

Lists It Appears On:

• Ranker
• Goodreads 2
• Boston Globe
• CIA 2

“A Look over My Shoulder begins with President Nixon’s attempt to embroil the Central Intelligence Agency, of which Richard Helms was then the director, in the Watergate cover-up. Helms then recalls his education in Switzerland and Germany and at Williams College; his early career as a foreign correspondent in Berlin, during which he once lunched with Hitler; and his return to newspaper work in the United States. Helms served on the German desk at OSS headquarters in London; subsequently, he was assigned to Allen Dulles’s Berlin office in postwar Germany.

On his return to Washington, Helms assumed responsibility for the OSS carryover operations in Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe. He remained in this post until the Central Intelligence Agency was formed in 1947. At CIA, Helms served in many positions, ultimately becoming the organization’s director from 1966 to 1973. He was appointed ambassador to Iran later that year and retired from government service in January 1977. It was often thought that Richard Helms, who served longer in the Central Intelligence Agency than anyone else, would never tell his story, but here it is–revealing, news-making, and with candid assessments of the controversies and triumphs of a remarkable career.”

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6 .) At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA by George Tenet

Lists It Appears On:

• Wikipedia
• Ranker
• Goodreads 2
• CIA 2

“In the whirlwind of accusations and recriminations that emerged in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war, one man’s vital testimony has been conspicuously absent. Candid and gripping, At the Center of the Storm recounts George Tenet’s time at the Central Intelligence Agency, a revealing look at the inner workings of the most important intelligence organization in the world during the most challenging times in recent history. With unparalleled access to both the highest echelons of government and raw intelligence from the field, Tenet illuminates the CIA’s painstaking attempts to prepare the country against new and deadly threats, disentangles the interlocking events that led to 9/11, and offers explosive new information on the deliberations and strategies that culminated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Beginning with his appointment as Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, Tenet unfolds the momentous events that led to 9/11 as he saw and experienced them: his declaration of war on al-Qa’ida; the CIA’s covert operations inside Afghanistan; the worldwide operational plan to fight terrorists; his warnings of imminent attacks against American interests to White House officials in the summer of 2001; and the plan for a coordinated and devastating counterattack against al-Qa’ida laid down just six days after the attacks.”

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5 .) From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War by Robert M. Gates

Lists It Appears On:

• Ranker
• Biostat
• CIA 1
• CIA 2

From a former director of the CIA, and one who served on the White House staffs of four presidents, this is the inside story of America’s and the agency’s roles in the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

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4 .) See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism by Robert B. Baer

Lists It Appears On:

• Wikipedia
• Ranker
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2

“On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the terrible result of that intelligence failure with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of those attacks, Americans were left wondering how such an obviously long-term, globally coordinated plot could have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert Baer was not surprised. A twenty-one-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations who had left the agency in 1997, Baer observed firsthand how an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post–cold war world and refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East and elsewhere.

A throwback to the days when CIA operatives got results by getting their hands dirty and running covert operations, Baer spent his career chasing down leads on suspected terrorists in the world’s most volatile hot spots. As he and his agents risked their lives gathering intelligence, he watched as the CIA reduced drastically its operations overseas, failed to put in place people who knew local languages and customs, and rewarded workers who knew how to play the political games of the agency’s suburban Washington headquarters but not how to recruit agents on the ground.
“

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3 .) The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA by John Ranelagh

Lists It Appears On:

• CIA 1
• Boston Globe
• The Washington Post
• CIA 2

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2 .) The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks

Lists It Appears On:

• Ranker
• Biostat
• Wikipedia
• The Washington Post

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1 .) Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Lists It Appears On:

• Wikipedia
• Goodreads
• Goodreads 2
• Bustle
• CIA 1

To what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising thread of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research and firsthand accounts by key government, intelligence, and military personnel both foreign and American, Ghost Wars details the secret history of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan (including its covert operations against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989), the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

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The Additional Best Books And Biographies About The C.S.I.

10 Best CSI Book Sources/Lists