The best books on assassinations | Hacker News Reader

The best books on assassinations

fivebooks.com

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The declassified CIA manuals on assassination: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html

Next on HN: assassination-idioms.org

When I was in Junior High / Early High School I went through quite the loompanics phase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics), buying lots of the books available there, including The Poor Man's James Bond, and several volumes of the How to Kill Series.

My stepfather was remarkably chill about it, considering our relationship, but maybe he didn't differentiate between those books and others as he never really understood the value of reading.

At any rate the only thing to come out of it (for those who worry) was that I got several talkings to when a rash of bomb threats hit our school. Maybe that was the first time I ever got put on a list!

on edit: I should probably mention that the books weren't very well written either, but I suppose literary quality was not on the top of their requirements list.

Don DeLillo, Libra should be in there somewhere, I think.

Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Man:_A_Technical_Manual_...

The Day of the Jackal is a phenomenal thriller

I second this ! Regardless whether it's a book on assassinations, it's a great read.

The text links to 'Rise and Kill: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations', which is amazing. It's great at explaining the motivation/reasoning behind the killings of the Mossad.

Best that I've read: I Claudius, by Robert Graves.

And the sequel, Claudius the God. Some of the page-turniest yet most glowingly literary fiction you're likely to read!

This was Graves' idea of making a quick buck by dashing off a potboiler, btw:

> Graves stated in an interview with Malcolm Muggeridge in 1965, that he wrote I, Claudius mainly because he needed the money to pay off a debt, having been let down in a land deal. He needed to raise £4000, but with the success of the books he brought in £8000 in six months, thus extricating himself from his precarious financial position. [2]

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Claudius

I'm not quite sure it's really a book on assassination. This being said, it also has a great BCC adaptation with Derek Jacobi [1] !

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEeXcJZEATU&list=PLEjWO5ZEvW...

I've just watched that recently and it was bloody brilliant. One of the best mini series ever

Those seem so dry. I would suggest Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.

Seem? Did you just judge a book by its cover?

or "A Case of Exploding Mangoes"

I like this book called “Assassination” where the author recreates the stories of 12 presidential assassination and assassination attempts using legos.

This is a bit off-topic, but Navalny calling his killer and pranking him into telling all kinds of nasty details of Navalny's own killing attempt is mind-bogging [1]. I am sure this is now part of all secrets services of the world 101 trainings.

Full audio with English transcript: [2].

There is also a bit of background told by Navalny later on, e.g. the name Maxim Sergeevich Ustinov was not really random.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlJbwUhIBxE

P.S. fivebooks.com seems to be spamming HN quite regularly.

Best to take a look at the submitting usernames before making that assertion. There’s a lot of variety for this domain, mostly from established accounts. It’s a fairly popular website.

A variety of posters doesn't prove there is no spamming ring.

Correct, but if you looked at the profiles of the submitters you would have immediately seen they were ordinary users, a few with a lot of karma.

I hate to disappoint but it really is just a popular literary site people like to share from time to time.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

70 submissions in 11 years is not "spamming quite regularly". There's no evidence of promotional submission.

I think the last fivebooks.com link was posted 45 days ago?

HHhH

We went to where North Korea tricked their agents for Kim Jong-nam's assignation.

I expected some sort of back alley brothel, but it was just the number one spot on Tripadvisor.

I think like all these things don't get stuck into a rut thinking the people doing this stuff are amazing or smart. You just need belief in yourself, and probably not even that. I bet Kim Jong-un top assassins had imposer syndrome too. (The on-ground recruits thought they were on a game show)

The Day of the Jackal movie (1973) was good for the work ethic part I thought, I haven't read the book - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069947/

> "Hitler, uncharacteristically, cut short the speech he was making to go and plan the invasion of France. Had he continued speaking, he would have been blown to pieces in November 1939. That would have surely have been a very good thing because, in the period between that event and the June 1944 bomb plot, two-and-a-half million German soldiers died."

Ah yes, the group of people who were famously killed en masse because of Hitler between 1939 and 1944... German soldiers.

That's a very troubling quote, so I went to the article, hoping it wasn't as bad as it sounded. But it seemed bad in the article, too.

The lead-up alludes to what I suspect was the author's intent, in that way of putting it (i.e., saying the effect relative to some goals of the assassin), but that's really not communicated as clearly as it must be.

I can understand that a writer might miss this communication failure, when in tunnel vision on some narrow point they were trying to make. But I'd hope a professional editor would've caught it. Perhaps there's an understated standard proofreading markup notation like "WTF?!" with a firmly-pressed circle around it. Then the writer would realize their communication mistake, and feel awful about it, but also relived it was caught before publication.

Ideally, that never would've made it to publication without editing. But a small consolation is that at least we readers can learn from the mistake, and be less likely to make that mistake ourselves.

I mean, 2.5m dead German soldiers is horrendous of course... but yeah, I have to agree... it's a very odd choice of phrase to make here?!

WTF. I agree with sister comment from GordonS.

But also need to say, that the numbers are off. WW II cost significantly less than 6 million German soldiers' lifes. The author states that 7 million German soldiers died.

But yeah. Stating the death of German soldiers as the most important outcome from WW II is imho at least problematic. It shows a lack of empathy and historic sensitivity.

> Stating the death of German soldiers as the most important outcome from WW II is imho at least problematic

Who is stating that? I don't see it there.

> Stating the death of German soldiers as the most important outcome from WW II

Who stated that?

The quote explicitly relates to Elser, whose motive in Hitler's assassination was to save Germany's workers and common people from war.

So mentioning the losses of German "cannon fodder" seems appropriate. Common Germans are what Elser cared about (and failed to save). I see no evil motive or lack of empathy on author's part.

Everybody kills Hitler on their first (time) trip.

https://archive.briankoberlein.com/2015/11/09/everybody-kill...

And then you're left with and even bigger jerk that rose in the ranks in his absence! MechaHitler

see “Making History” by Stephen Fry

but see also: Alfred Bester, The Men Who Murdered Mohammed.

And the best series on wipe out your traces of killings:

Breaking Bad.

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