About the book: 
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
by Tim Weiner
Mariner Books - 461 pages 21.99 (Kindle)
Publication Date: July 15, 2025

About the Author: Tim Weiner
 

Tim Weiner graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in history and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was a Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1982 to 1992, for The New York Times from 1993 to 2009 as a foreign correspondent in Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan and as a national security correspondent in Washington, DC.

Weiner won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as an investigative reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, for his articles on the black budget spending at the Pentagon and the CIA. His book Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget is based on that newspaper series.

He won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for his 2007 book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

In 2012, Weiner published Enemies: A History of the FBI, which traces the history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations from the bureau's creation in the early 20th century through its ongoing role in the war on terrorism.

His latest book, The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare, 1945–2020, was published in 2020. Among other things it describes how the CIA helped Joseph Mobutu as a reliable anti-communist in Congo, or how Ronald Reagan's encounter with Pope John Paul II led to a covert program to support the Polish Solidarity movement. Timothy Naftali cautions that Weiner may be overstating Putin's influence on the 2016 Presidential elections: "The Trump phenomenon, which the Russians abetted but did not create, emerged from a broken nation." This is also the assessment of Rajan Menon who, in his review for The New York Times, furthermore contends that he found no evidence supporting Weiner's suggestion that NATO expansion toward the Russian border in the 1990s sprang from the mind of Anthony Lake.  

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Kate Doyle, an expert in human rights and freedom of information.

Biography Credit:  Wikipedia

About the book: 
Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet
by Edward Luce
Simon and Schuster - 560 pages 34.99 (Kindle)
Publication Date: May 13, 2025

About the Author: Edward Luce

Edward Luce is US national editor and columnist for the Financial Times (FT). Before that he was the FT's Washington bureau chief, South Asia bureau chief, capital markets editor and Philippines correspondent. He is highly regarded by policymakers and leaders and his articles are regularly the ‘most read’ on the FT website. In his work, Luce brings global insights to bear into the future of work and the major challenges facing the West, including the rise of populism and the decline of the middle class. 

He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017), Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012) and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007), praised by the Economist as “likely to be the definitive book on India for some time to come”. He appears regularly on CNN, NPR, MSNBC’s Morning Joe and the BBC. Luce is also the author, along with colleague Rana Foroohar, of the FT Swamp Notes newsletter, a twice weekly read which covers the intersection of money, power and politics in America. 

Between 1999 and 2001 he was the speechwriter for treasury secretary in the Clinton Administration, Lawrence Summers. Luce earned a degree in politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford; he earned a postgraduate degree in newspaper journalism at City University in London.
Biography Credit:  Centre for Development and Enterprise