Cold War Summer Reading Bucket List Challenge

Many of us loved a summer reading challenge as children, and some of us still love to spend the summer reading.

If you start Cold War’s Summer Reading Challenge today, you have eleven weeks to read five books, chosen from ten categories. The categories and the books in each are listed below.

 You can track your progress using our checklist. You can access it here and at the bottom of this page.

Those of you who want more info on the books can check our Facebook Page. I’ll be posting descriptions of the books daily until all of them are listed. I’ll start the descriptions in this post with The Director: A Novel, our selection for movie lovers.

Here are the ten categories.

Read one book for Movie Lovers

The Director: A Novel, by Daniel Kehlmann
(S&S/Summit Books, May 6,2025)
The book tells the story of G.W. Pabst, the Austrian filmmaker who worked in the shadow of the Reich. This New York Times review describes it in a nutshell as How to Make Art Under the Nazis (Without Losing Your Soul).
You can read a short book review in Kirkus here.

Read one non-fiction book about Espionage

The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner, by Douglas Waller
The Invisible Spy, by Thomas Maier
Vatican Spies: From the Second World War to Pope Francis, by Yvonnick Denoël
To Catch a Spy, by James A. Olson
The Poet’s Game, by Paul Vidich

Read one fiction book about Espionage

Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway
The Seventh Floor: A Novel, by David McCloskey
Gabriel’s Moon, by William Boyd
A Reluctant Spy, by David Goodman
The Enigma Girl, by Henry Porter
The Berlin Letters, by Katherine Reay

Read one book by John Le Carre

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
A Perfect Spy
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Honourable Schoolboy
Smiley’s People
The Looking Glass War

(Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People make up what’s known as The Karla Trilogy. For more about George Smiley click here.)

Read one book about the Cold War on the American Homefront

Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, by Clay Risen
Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today, by Phil Tinline
The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West, by Shaun Walker

Read one book about a Specific Region

Africa

The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, by Stuart A. Reid
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, by Siddhartha Kara

Read one book about Latin America

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation, by Scott Anderson (out in August)
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq, by Steve Coll
A Day in the  Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall
What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East, Fawaz A. Gerges
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, by Hisham Matar

Read one book about Space – fiction or nonfiction

Atmosphere: A Love Story,  Taylor Jenkins Reid
Orbital: A Novel, by Samantha Harvey
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, by Adam Higginbotham

Read one book about Cold War History

Vietnam’s American War, by Pierre Asselin
Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, by John Cassidy
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, by Tony Judt
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich
(based on oral histories)

Read one Biography

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, by Sam Tanenhaus
Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien, by Alex Vernon
Reagan: His Life and Legend, by Max Boot
The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, by Kai Bird
The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, by Adam Shatz
John Lewis: A Life, by David Greenberg

Read one Oldie but Goodie

The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
The Ugly American, by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick
1984, by George Orwell
Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan, by James A. Michener
The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy

Don’t forget to access your checklist here. And look for descriptions on our Facebook Page in the coming days. Meanwhile, your comments are always welcome. If you have favorites I haven’t mentioned, please share them with me.