Books by Kai Bird

1. Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames .  Kai Bird is very highly rated, but in my view he remains underrated.  I very much like each and every one of his books, and this sympathetic treatment brings to life the Middle East conflicts through the 1980s, and also the life of a CIA officer, as well as a bygone era in U.S. foreign policy.

4. Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 .  This is a fascinating portrait of the mid-century Arab world, a story of a itinerant childhood, plus it's an account of festering Mideast conflicts, a political Bildungsroman, and, every now and then, a story of what it's like to be an Israel skeptic and also be married to a woman whose parents are Holocaust survivors.  Intelligent on every page.