Recommended Reading
Part of the Library, by AB//LABS. Read this list as a website at library.ab-labs.io/recommended-reading, or take it into your reference manager: BibTeX, CSL JSON (imports straight into Zotero) or CSV.
Related resources:
- Maritime and Supply Chain OSINT Tools: the tools and data sources we use, also as a website.
- AI-Enhanced OSINT: our guide to using AI in intelligence work, also as a website.
- Atlas|Bear Academy: professional development programmes from Atlas|Bear, the company we spun off from.
These are the books, reports and papers we recommend to people who work on illicit trade: analysts, investigators, journalists, students at the Summer School on Illicit Trade, and colleagues who ask us where to start. Every entry carries a full citation, an ISBN or DOI, and a few sentences on why it is worth your time and who it suits.
The list is short on purpose and it is not exhaustive. If a title you rely on is missing, please propose it. We reply to every proposal.
Start here
One pick per section if you only have time for one.
- Financial crime and illicit networks: Global Shell Games: Experiments in Transnational Relations, Crime, and Terrorism, Findley, Michael G., Daniel L. Nielson, and J. C. Sharman (2014).
- Global economics and politics: Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, Shaxson, Nicholas (2012).
- Geopolitics and strategy: The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, Hopkirk, Peter (2006).
- OSINT and digital investigation: OSINT Techniques: Resources for Uncovering Online Information, Bazzell, Michael (2024).
- Reports and papers: Oil and Water, C4ADS (2025).
- Wider reading: Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, Mathews, Gordon (2011).
Sections
How to read an entry
Each entry gives the title (linked to the edition we recommend on Open Library, or to the DOI), a citation in Chicago author-date style with the ISBN-13 or DOI, then Why read it and Who it is for. A note at the end marks titles that are open access, self-published, or out of print and hard to find. Where we cite a reissue or translation, the first year in brackets is the original.
How this list is maintained
The list lives in one data file, data/library.yml. A script builds this page, the website and the downloads from it, and checks every ISBN against Open Library and every DOI against Crossref or DataCite once a month. We sweep the whole list twice a year with our other lists, re-check editions, and record changes in the CHANGELOG. Each sweep ends with a GitHub release.