A fantastic spy story with all the intrigue of a Le Carre novel, about Ana Montes, a Cuban spy within the US intelligence community who was trying to stay one step ahead of her sister, also a government official. One of the greatest spy stories you’ve never heard.
CODE NAME BLUE WREN:
The True Story of the Hunt for America’s Most Dangerous Female Spy
by Jim Popkin
Hanover Square Press, early 2023
(via Javelin)
In the aftermath of 9/11, Ana Montes was arrested by federal authorities after 17 years of feeding American secrets to the Cuban government.
The Cubans made a habit out of selling US intel to the highest bidders – Russia, Venezuela, Iran – and Ana Montes was a generous supplier of some of our nation’s biggest secrets. Her offenses were so grave she is called the most dangerous female spy in American history, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted her executed. The hunt for this dangerous spy – an operation codenamed BLUE WREN – has been an obsession for journalist Jim Popkin, who has written about this case in publications such as the Washington Post. He has unprecedented access to key characters in this story, including Ana’s sister, Lucy, who worked for the FBI. Lucy’s job: identifying Cuban spies.
This is a story about ideology, about betrayal, about the supersecret world of espionage (which the Cubans have mastered), and about two sisters who chose two very different paths.
Popkin’s cover story for the Washington Post Magazine, “The Queen of Cuba,” was selected as a “Page-Turner” by the New Yorker and named one of the “Great Post Reads” by the Washington Post.
A dramatic adaptation is already in the works.
Jim Popkin is a writer whose investigative articles and reports have appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, Newsweek, WIRED, Slate, The Guardian, Washingtonian and on National Public Radio.

Email replies that show up a week later. Video chats full of “oops sorry no you go” and “can you hear me?!” Ambiguous text-messages. Weird punctuation you can’t make heads or tails of. Is it any wonder communication takes us so much time and effort to figure out? How did we lose our innate capacity to understand each other?
Before becoming the face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and America’s most trusted doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci had already devoted three decades to public service. Those looking to live a more compassionate and purposeful life will find inspiration in his unique perspective on leadership, expecting the unexpected, and finding joy in difficult times. With more than three decades spent combating some of the most dangerous diseases to strike humankind – AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19 – Dr. Fauci has worked in daunting professional conditions and shouldered great responsibility. The earnest reflections in these pages offer a universal message on how to lead in times of crisis and find resilience in the face of disappointments and obstacles. Filled with inspiring words of wisdom, this profound book will offer readers a concrete path to a bright and hopeful future.
RISING TOGETHER will offer practical advice to help men and women move past impediments and establish relationships built on authenticity and trust. Finding a way to do this has become urgent in the wake of the pandemic. Working virtually has made questions of visibility, perception and assessment both more vital and more complex, while also undermining time-honored ways of building networks and alliances. These challenges will not disappear when we emerge from this period because the trend toward virtual work was already underway; the disruptions of 2020 simply accelerated it. Rising Together addresses the human questions on how we move forward.
Quantum physics is weird and spooky and mystical and if you only understood it, you’d be rich and beautiful and have great sex, right? Wrong. Quantum physics is a wellunderstood science that professional bullshitters use to dupe unsuspecting victims with get-rich-quick scams and bogus self-help advice. This book is a no-nonsense explanation of what quantum physics is and is not, told in an accessible, humorous style with just the right amount of curse words. If you f*cking love science and want to be slightly less dumb than you were when you woke up this morning, this is the goddamn book for you.