Alex Abella

Last updated

Alex Abella (born 1950) is an American author and journalist best known for his non-fiction works Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008) and Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States (2003, with Scott Gordon).

Contents

Early life

Abella was born in Cuba in 1950. His family left the country after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. [1] The family settled in New York, where Abella attended Columbia University on a Pulitzer scholarship. At school, he wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator . [2] [3]

Career

After college, Abella moved to California to work for the San Francisco Chronicle initially covering local news, then network news as a reporter, writer, and producer. [1]

Abella left the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s for Los Angeles, spending seven years there as a Spanish language interpreter for the Los Angeles Superior Court. [1] His first novel, The Killing of the Saints (1991), is a Los Angeles crime thriller about the beliefs of the Santería religion used as a defense for murder. [4] Saints and its sequels, Dead of Night (1998) and Final Acts (2000), feature a Cuban-American lawyer and investigator of Cuban heritage. [5]

Abella's second novel, The Great American (1997) is set in Cuba in 1957 during the Cuban Revolution and is the fictionalized story of a United States Marine who fought on the side of Fidel Castro.

Abella's non-fiction work includes Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States (2003), co-authored with law professor and current Los Angeles Superior Court judge Scott Gordon. The book is set in Germany during World War II and follows a group of German-American agents trained in sabotage and terrorism. [6]

The author's most recent book, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008), is the first history of the foreign policy think tank founded by the United States Military and funded in part by the United States Government. [7] [8] The book was longlisted for the National Book Award.

In addition to his nonfiction books, Abella has been a contributing writer with the Los Angeles Times and now contributes to the Huffington Post. [9]

Awards

At KTVU-TV, Abella was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Best Breaking News Story." His first novel, The Killing of the Saints (1991), was a New York Times Notable Book. [10]

Works

Novels

Non-fiction books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Wohlstetter</span> American political scientist

Albert James Wohlstetter was an American political scientist noted for his influence on U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War. He and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter, an accomplished historian and intelligence expert, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Columbia University School of General Studies</span> Undergraduate school of Columbia University in New York City

The School of General Studies, Columbia University (GS) is a liberal arts college and one of the undergraduate colleges of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights, New York City. GS is known primarily for its traditional B.A. program for non-traditional students. GS students make up almost 30% of the Columbia undergraduate population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson DeMille</span> American author

Nelson Richard DeMille is an American author of action adventure and suspense novels. His novels include Plum Island, The Charm School, and The Gold Coast. DeMille has also written under the pen names Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, Ellen Kay and Brad Matthews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Dudley Pelley</span> American fascist political leader (1890–1965)

William Dudley Pelley was an American fascist activist, journalist, writer and occultist, noted for his support of German dictator Adolf Hitler during the Great Depression and World War II.

Richard de Mille was an American author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knights of the Golden Circle</span> Secret society in the mid-19th-century US

The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) was a secret society founded in 1854 by American George W. L. Bickley, the objective of which was to create a new country, known as the Golden Circle, where slavery would be legal. The country would have been centered in Havana and would have consisted of the Southern United States and a "golden circle" of territories in Mexico, Central America, northern parts of South America, and Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and most other islands in the Caribbean, about 2,400 miles (3,900 km) in diameter.

<i>Young Bond</i> Series of novels by Charlie Higson

Young Bond is a series of young adult spy novels featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond as a young teenage boy attending school at Eton College in the 1930s. The series, written by Charlie Higson, was originally planned to include only five novels; however, after the release of the fifth novel, Higson considered the possibility of a second series. In October 2013 it was confirmed that a second series of four novels was in development, with the first novel due for release in Q3 2014, but it would be penned by Steve Cole while Higson continued work on his young adult zombie series, The Enemy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George John Dasch</span> German spy (1903–1991)

George John Dasch was a German agent who landed on American soil during World War II. He helped to destroy Nazi Germany's espionage program in the United States by defecting to the American cause, but was tried and convicted of espionage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Pastorius</span> 1942 failed German sabotage in the U.S. during WWII

Operation Pastorius was a failed German intelligence plan for sabotage inside the United States during World War II. The operation was staged in June 1942 and was to be directed against strategic American economic targets. The operation was named by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the German Abwehr, for Francis Daniel Pastorius, the organizer of the first organized settlement of Germans in America. The plan involved eight German saboteurs who had previously spent time in the United States.

John Joseph Loftus, is an American author, former high level U.S. government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer. He is the president of The Intelligence Summit and of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carman Hall</span> Building in New York City, New York

Carman Hall is a dormitory located on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus and currently houses first-year students from Columbia College as well as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.

<i>King of the Congo</i> 1952 film by Wallace Grissell, Spencer Gordon Bennet

King of the Congo is a 1952 American 15 chapter movie serial, the 48th released by Columbia Pictures. It was produced by Sam Katzman, directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace Grissell, and stars Buster Crabbe. The serial also co-stars Gloria Dea, Leonard Penn, Jack Ingram, Rick Vallin, Nick Stuart, William Fawcett, and Rusty Wescoatt. King of the Congo was based on the comic book character "Thun'da", created by Frank Frazetta, and published by Magazine Enterprises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Hoffman</span> American counterterrorism analyst and foreign policy expert

Bruce R. Hoffman is an American political analyst. He specializes in the study of terrorism, counter-terrorism, insurgency, and counter-insurgency. Hoffman serves as the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security on the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a professor at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. In addition, he is the Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of Terrorism Studies at the University of St Andrews, and is the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Quirin</span> Spy for Nazi Germany (1908–1942)

Richard Quirin was a German agent executed as a spy for Nazi Germany in World War II. He was one of eight agents involved in Operation Pastorius, and gave his name to the Supreme Court decision on the trial, Ex parte Quirin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RAND Corporation</span> American global policy think tank founded in 1948

The RAND Corporation is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND Corporation engages in research and development (R&D) in a number of fields and industries. Since the 1950s, RAND research has helped inform United States policy decisions on a wide variety of issues, including the space race, the Vietnam War, the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms confrontation, the creation of the Great Society social welfare programs, and national health care.

Konrad Kellen was a German-born American political scientist, intelligence analyst and author.

The following is a complete list of books published by Tom Clancy, an American author of contemporary spy fiction and military fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abdi Nazemian</span> Iranian-American author, screenwriter and producer

Abdi Nazemian is an Iranian-American author, screenwriter, and producer. His debut novel, The Walk-In Closet, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction at the 27th Lambda Literary Awards. He has subsequently received a second Lambda Literary Award for his young adult novel Only This Beautiful Moment, as well as a Stonewall Book Award for Only This Beautiful Moment and a Stonewall Honor for Like a Love Story, both from the American Library Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Furnald Hall</span> Building in New York City, New York

Furnald Hall is a dormitory located on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus and currently houses first-year students from Columbia College as well as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. It is dedicated in memory of Royal Blacker Furnald, of the Columbia College Class of 1901.

Matthew Bracken is an American writer and novelist, and former Navy SEAL associated with the Patriot movement. He is known for a series of novels, beginning with the Enemies trilogy, that depict a United States torn apart by violent conflict. He is a frequent guest and occasional guest host on Alex Jones InfoWars show.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Garry Abrams (September 1991). "Writes of Passage". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-11-27.
  2. "Columbia Daily Spectator 17 December 1971 — Columbia Spectator". spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  3. "Columbia Daily Spectator 11 November 1971 — Columbia Spectator". spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  4. Christie, John S. (1998). Latino Fiction and the Modernist Imagination: Literature of the Borderlands. Routledge. p. 177.
  5. Pepper, Andrew (2001). The Contemporary American Crime Novel: Race, Ethnicity, and Class. Routledge. p. 161.
  6. Abella, Alex; Gordon, Scott (2003). Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States . Lyons Press. shadow enemies.
  7. "Soldier of Reason: Kirkus Review". Kirkus Reviews. 2008-05-01. Retrieved 2010-11-17.
  8. Herken, Gregg (2008-07-06). "Dr. Strangelove's Workplace". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-11-26.
  9. Abella, Alex. "Alex Abella at the Huffington Post" . Retrieved 2010-11-26.
  10. "Notable Books of the Year 1991". The New York Times. 1991-12-01. Archived from the original on 1 December 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-26.
  11. ThriftBooks. "The total banana (An Original... book by Alex Abella". ThriftBooks. Retrieved 2023-04-21.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Alex Abella Books In Order - Complete List of Novels". Mystery Sequels. Retrieved 2023-04-21.
  13. "Alex Abella". Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 2023-04-21.