Ghost Wars
by Steve Coll | 
Legacy of Ashes
by Tim Weiner | 
Killing Hope
by William Blum | 
Games without Rules
by Tamim Ansary | 
Into the Fire
by Dakota Meyer | 
The Meaning of Hitler
by Sebastian Haffner | 
No Good Men Among the Living
by Anand Gopal | 
Troublesome Young Men
by Lynne Olson | 
Franklin and Winston
by Jon Meacham | 
The Brothers
by Stephen Kinzer |
Hitler and Stalin
by Alan Bullock | 
Duty
by Robert M. Gates | 
Tried by War
by James M. McPherson |
Washington's Secret War
by Thomas Fleming | 
The Great War of Our Time
by Michael Morell | 
Obama's Wars
by Bob Woodward | 
The Dictators
by Richard Overy | 
The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler
by Laurence Rees | 
The War Lovers
by Evan Thomas | 
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War
by Neil Sheehan |
Charlie Wilson's War was a publishing sensation and a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller. In the early 1980s, a Houston socialite turned the attention of maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet invaders. Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujahideen. The arms were secretly procured and distributed with the help of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrokotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Avrakotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation and, with their help, continually stretched the Agency's rules to the breaking point. Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers' conventions, to the Khyber Pass, this book presents an astonishing chapter of our recent past, and the key to understanding what helped trigger the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and ultimately led to the emergence of a brand-new foe in the form of radical Islam.