Reading List

Along with my own papers, this is a list of some of the pertinent books I have purchased in the course of my research, and does not include numerous ebooks via Google Books and scholarly papers I have also used.

PAPERS (I wrote)

If you are interested in my prior peer reviewed papers on Nostradamus as Russian Information Warfare, Disinformation, Propaganda, Conspiracy Theory, etc., please see:

  1. Russian Active Measures and September 11, 2001: Nostradamus Themed Disinformation (2017) – International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism (IJCWT)
  2. Nostradamus Prophecy as a Russian Information Warfare Concept (2017) – Proceedings of the European Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ECCWS)
  3. Nostradamus Ratios: Why is Russia an Outlier? (2018) – Proceedings of the International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS)
  4. Russian Information Warfare and 9/11 Conspiracism: When Fake News Meets False Prophecy? (2019) – Developments in Information Security and Cybernetic Wars (chapter in edited book related to IJCWT)
  5. Notre Dame Fire Conspiracism as Reflective of Russian Ideological Competition with the West (2020)  – Proceedings of the International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS)
  6. Ivan the Terrible as Pivotal Figure in the Ideology of Information Warfare (2021) – Proceedings of the International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS)
  7. Semiotics of Strategic Narratives of Antichrist in Russia’s War in Ukraine (2023) – Proceedings of the European Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ECCWS)

BOOKS (I bought)

Ivan the Terrible

  • In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires, Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu (1992)
  • Ivan the Terrible – Profiles in Power, Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie (2003)
  • Ivan the Terrible: The First Tsar of Russia, Isabel De Madariaga (2005)
  • Terror & Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths, Kevin M. F. Platt (2011)

Modern Russia

  • Blowing up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror, Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky (2002) (worth reading with some skepticism — afterall, Litvinenko was once a diehard Russian Orthodox before his conversion to Islam; and Putin has brought back ‘Tsarist Orthodox’ terror, not KGB… as Putin has said: “There is no such thing as a former KGB man…”)
  • Political Orthodoxy: Russian Orthodox Nationalists and Fundamentalists 1995-2001 rr. [Unauthorized English translation with appended Russian original], Alexander Verkhovsky (2003)
  • The Kremlin Conspiracy: 1,000 Years of Russian Expansionism, Douglas Boyd (2014)
  • The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule, John Dunlop (2012)

Nostradamus

  • Nostradamus: The Man Behind the Prophecies, Ian Wilson (2007)
    • Contains a passing reference to Nostradamus in the context of hundreds of years of European “disinformation”, including use by Allies and Axis in WWII. It is a generally non-mystical and historical approach to Nostradamus as a real person unlike most histories or pseudohistories.

Orson Welles

  • Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder, Mary Pacios (2007)
    • Highlights a potential trait of aggressive psychopathic personality in Welles as well as portrays him as a plausible suspect in the murder of the Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short). Highlights Welles’ strong connections to Surrealist art motifs. (Many figures in the Exquisite Corpse book are affiliated with Welles although this book doesn’t necessarily consider him deeply as a Surrealist. However, I think in totality it strongly supports ideas both of Welles as a communist sympathizer and the idea that Surrealism itself could have intelligence connections.)
  • Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder, Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss (2006)
    • Many associates of Orson Welles are in the network explored by the authors as suspects in the Black Dahlia murder. Welles himself is not discussed.
  • Modernism, Media, and Propaganda: British Narrative from 1900-1945, Mark Wollaeger (2006) (Chapter 5 – From the Thirties to World War II: Negotiating Modernism and Propaganda in Hitchcock and Welles )
  • The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, Michael Denning (1996) (Chapter 10 – The Politics of Magic: Orson Welles’ Allegories of Antifascism)

Other

  • Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, Mark Fenster (2008)
  • Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism, Ion Mihai Pacepa and Ron Rychlak (2013)*
    • (*Despite being a very good book., this one is worth including a disclaimer for. Pacepa is generally considered to be credible in his first hand reporting on historical events up to his defection but his subsequent writings on intelligence as a defector are undoubtedly tinged with a right wing political bias. Smells of some ‘weaponization’. The book was published by WND and I do not subscribe to the WND-perspective on the news (or the book’s uniformly anti-Obama stance); but this text is breakthrough in some ways for how it conceives of a connection between Russia and the September 11 attacks. It is also enlightening about Russia’s ongoing conflict and schisms with Catholicism even in the time of the atheist Soviet state as well as general ‘war on religion’. It shows in a sense how Tsarist propaganda came to become Soviet propaganda (eg. Protocols of Zion). Almost every ‘intelligence history’ angle I’ve researched from the book has ‘checked out’. I think it is a most valuable text if you subtract the modern politics. While enlightening the reader about the Russian war on Judaism and Catholicism (and influence of Russia on Islam), it seems to miss the effects of anti-Muslim sentiment in a sense which cooperation with a ‘Russian war on terror’ may entail. All the Nostradamus stuff ‘clicked’ for me in terms of synergism with historical active measures after reading it. In any case, the book was very important for enhancing my own perspectives on Russian Orthodox holy war and I endorse it.)
  • Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Stephen Budiansky (2004)
  • Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s, edited by Oliver Shell and Oliver Tostmann (2018)
    • This book accompanied the exhibition by the same name which was put on by the Wadsworth Atheneum and Baltimore Museum of Fine Art. It highlights the strong role that war had on the development of the Trotskyist-affiliated Surrealist movement which was a reciprocal response in some ways to Nazi aggression. As far as my own theories, many figures associated with the movement were also closely connected to Russian or Communist intelligence operatives and the movement also seems significant for spreading anti-fascist conspiracism in the West. As Stalin was the true originator of anti-fascism, and Trotsky was the original head of Russian military intelligence, the movement can be seen to be kind of a ‘left hand’ of covert Russian political influence which may complement my ideas about how Stalin apparently influenced both the Nazis and the opposition to them. The book itself doesn’t delve into these matters but moreso the Surrealists’ artistic responses to encroaching fascism in Europe. (The book includes the full catalog in color and also opens with a quote on Nostradamus by Salvador Dali: “According to Nostradamus the apparition of monsters presages the outbreak of war.“)
  • The Secret World: A History of Intelligence, Christopher Andrew (2018)

Russian History and Philosophy

  • Milton and the Rise of Russian Satanism, Valentin Boss (1991)
  • Red Shambhala, Andrei Znamenski (2011)
    • The close connection between Russian Bolshevik cryptanalysts and occultism in Asia; as well as the utilization of prophecy for the purposes of social engineering seems to have many parallels with the observations I’ve personally made on Nostradamus, Theosophy, etc in Western societies as potential tools of Russian geopolitics as well.
  • Russian Messianism: Third Rome, revolution, Communism and after, Peter J.S. Duncan (2000) 
    • This book has a lot of great information conceptualizing how historical messianic beliefs about Russia and Orthodoxy have evolved into modern Russian nationalist ideologies. It isn’t a book about information warfare but it complements the field well. When you apply it to observations about information warfare in Putin’s Russia (which was not really established at the time of the book’s publication in 2000), as well as plausible information warfare on the internet in the 1990’s which may be attributable to Russia, I think it is important for ‘understanding the mind of the adversary’ in terms of how Russia views itself and the outside world. Even in the time of the ‘godless’ Soviet Union, it demonstrates the important role that Orthodoxy had on the organization and behavior of the state and people.
  • The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia, W.F. Ryan (2012)
  • The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945, Michael Kellogg (2008)
    • Since I ponder influences of Theosophy on the symbology and ideology of the Nazis and as having ‘White Russian’ roots seemingly linked to the secret police, it is interesting that fascism itself in pre-WWII Germany may be likely the product of Russian influence. Coincidence or something more?
  • The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (1997)

WWII – Cold War Spies

  • Black Propaganda in the Second World War, Stanley Newcourt-Nowodworski (2005)
  • Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West, Stephen Koch (1994)
  • Last of the Cold War Spies: The Life of Michael Straight, Roland Perry (2005)
  • Room 3603: The Story of the British Intelligence Center in New York During World War II, H. Montgomery Hyde (1963)
  • Secret Intelligence Agent: British Espionage in America and the Creation of the OSS, H. Montgomery Hyde (1982)
  • Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Alexander Vassiliev (2009)
  • The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945 – 1989, Nicholas Cull (2008)
  • The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era, Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev (1999)
  • The Secret History of PWE: The Political Warfare Executive 1939-1945, David Garnett (2002)
  • The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (1985)