// Alternatives
Alternatives to American Kingpin
Books in our catalog with overlapping topics and a similar reading level to American Kingpin. If American Kingpin is the wrong fit at beginner level, start here.
01 · 2022
Tracers in the Dark
Andy Greenberg's investigative narrative of how Bitcoin's allegedly-anonymous public ledger became, in the hands of researchers and federal investigators, the most powerful OSINT tool of the last decade.
Beginner5/5Andy Greenberg02 · 2011
Kingpin
Kevin Poulsen's reconstruction of Max Butler's career — from white-hat consultant to running CardersMarket, the carding forum that consolidated the early-2000s underground — and the FBI investigation that finally took him down.
Beginner5/5Kevin Poulsen03 · 2024
Dark Wire
Journalist Joseph Cox's account of Anom, the encrypted phone company secretly run by the FBI from 2018 to 2021, and of the global wave of arrests that followed Operation Trojan Shield.
Beginner4/5Joseph Cox04 · 2022
Cyberattaques
A clear, journalistic decoding of the cyberattack ecosystem — ransomware gangs, state actors, and the economics and geopolitics behind the headlines — by one of France's best-known cyber experts.
Beginner4/5Gérôme Billois, Nicolas Cougot05 · 2022
The Ransomware Hunting Team
Investigative journalism on the volunteers who quietly cracked ransomware to free victims for free, while the FBI mostly watched. A people-first look at the early ransomware economy.
Beginner4/5Renee Dudley, Daniel Golden06 · 2014
Spam Nation
Brian Krebs's investigative deep-dive into the Russian-speaking pharma-spam economy of the late 2000s — the affiliate networks, the rivalries, and the people who ran them.
Beginner4/5Brian Krebs07 · 2018
Open Source Intelligence Techniques and Tools
Hassan and Hijazi's pedagogical introduction to OSINT framed inside the broader intelligence cycle (collection → processing → analysis → dissemination) rather than around a specific toolchain.
Beginner3/5Nihad A. Hassan, Rami Hijazi08 · 2020
The Hacker and the State
Ben Buchanan's argument that state-on-state cyber operations are not deterrence-shaped (like nuclear) but signaling-shaped: countries use cyber to shape the environment, not to threaten escalation. Builds the case from declassified incidents.
Beginner5/5Ben Buchanan09 · 2019
Sandworm
Long-form journalism on the GRU's hacking operations, the best non-technical book on what state-level cyber actually looks like.
Beginner5/5Andy Greenberg10 · 1999
The Code Book
A narrative history of cryptography from Caesar ciphers to public-key, told through the people and the wars that turned on broken codes. Still the best on-ramp to why crypto matters.
Beginner5/5Simon Singh