Books like Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

01

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

Ben Macintyre · History

In 1943, British intelligence planted a dead man on a Spanish beach carrying fabricated documents designed to convince the Germans that the Allied invasion of southern Europe would target Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily.

Shares world war ii and identity with Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal.

02

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre · History

Ben Macintyre tells the story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer who became the most important British spy of the Cold War.

Shares espionage and identity with Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal.

03

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

William L. Shirer · History

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is William Shirer's comprehensive account of Nazi Germany from the early career of Adolf Hitler through the defeat of the Reich in 1945.

Both dig into world war ii.

04

American Prometheus

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin · Biography

Kai Bird and Martin J.

A kindred history read.

05

American Nations

Colin Woodard · History

American Nations is Colin Woodard's argument that North America is not a single nation but a continent of 11 distinct regional cultures, each founded by different waves of settlers with different values, institutions, and political philosophies, and that understanding those foundational cultures is more useful for explaining American political conflict than the standard red-state/blue-state framing.

Both dig into identity.

06

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder · History

Bloodlands is Timothy Snyder's account of the territories between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — principally Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states — where the two regimes' violence overlapped between 1933 and 1945.

Both dig into world war ii.

07

Lost in Shangri-La

Mitchell Zuckoff · History

Lost in Shangri-La tells the story of a 1945 military plane crash in the Baliem Valley of New Guinea — a hidden highland region so remote and unknown to the outside world that the press called it Shangri-La.

Both dig into world war ii.

08

Natural Born Heroes

Christopher McDougall · History

Natural Born Heroes is Christopher McDougall's follow-up to Born to Run, and it attempts something equally ambitious: to argue that heroism is a trainable physical and psychological skill, and that the human body contains natural capacities for endurance, power, and resilience that modern life has systematically atrophied.

Both dig into world war ii.

09

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Patrick Radden Keefe · History

Say Nothing opens with a scene that sets its register precisely: Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, is dragged from her Belfast flat by a gang of masked strangers in December 1972 and never seen alive again.

Both dig into identity.

10

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon · History

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two Jewish cousins — Josef Kavalier, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague, and Sam Clay (born Sammy Klayman), a Brooklyn dreamer — who together create one of the golden age's great superhero franchises in late-1930s New York.

Both dig into identity.

11

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin · History

The Fire Next Time, published in 1963 at the height of the civil rights movement, contains two long essays by James Baldwin.

Both dig into identity.

12

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes · History

Richard Rhodes spent years researching the scientific and political story behind the Manhattan Project, and the result is a work of narrative history that refuses to treat the bomb as either a triumph or a horror to be judged from a comfortable distance.

Both dig into world war ii.