Northshire Bookstore Event: Tim Weiner on “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century”

(Manchester Center, VT) On Saturday, September 20 at 6:00 pm, Northshire Bookstore will host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tim Weiner to discuss the epic successor to Legacy of Ashes, his National Book Award–winning classic about the CIA’s first sixty years. A New Yorker Best book of 2025, The Mission is a masterpiece of reporting based on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors and scores of spies, station chiefs, and top operations officers.

At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn’t being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA’s officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.

Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets—Moscow, Beijing, Tehran—while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force. 

TIM WEINER has won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on American national security and the National Book Award for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. At The New York Times, he covered the CIA in Washington and conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and many other nations. Legacy of Ashes was acclaimed as one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Time, and many other publications. His five other books include the national bestseller Enemies: A History of the FBI.

“The Mission is a fantastic read… reminds us of the importance of the human element when it comes to high-stakes diplomacy, and the life-and-death decisions on which our national security depends.” — The Observer (London) 

“This masterful new history should be required reading…Astonishing…A singular triumph.”    — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 

For more information on this or other events, email events@northshire.com, or visit the Northshire Bookstore website at www.northshire.com.

Northshire Bookstore, originally founded in 1976, has locations in Manchester, Vermont and Saratoga Springs, NY as well as at Northshire.com. Our large but intimate general bookstores carry the largest selection of categories and genres including new & used fiction, history, cooking, arts and rare author-signed editions. We also have entire floors devoted to Children’s Books and toys, a full line of stationery, magazines, music, cards, calendars, locally-sourced foods and many fine gifts from clothing to jewelry. Open to the public daily from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM and 24/7 online with free shipping at www.northshire.com