Author event! Christina Hillsberg x Amanda Montell

Zibby's Bookshop is excited to host Christina Hillsberg to celebrate the launch of AGENTS OF CHANGE! Christina will be joined by Amanda Montell, bestselling author of CULTISH!

About the book:

The timely and revelatory exploration of the pioneering women who changed the insulated world of international espionage—from the barrier-crashing challenges of the 1960s to the present-day reckoning—told through the eyes of a former intelligence operative herself.

Foreword by Valerie Plame, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Game and former CIA operations officer.

Years after her successful and impactful career at the CIA, Christina Hillsberg became enthralled with the stories of the trailblazing women who forged new paths within the Agency long before she began her career there in the aughts. These were women who sacrificed their personal lives, risked their safety, defied expectations, and boldly navigated the male-dominated spy organization.

Through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly, Agents of Change tells an enthralling and, at times, disturbing story set against the backdrop of the evolving women’s movement. It was in the 1960s, a “secretarial” era, when women first gained a foothold and pushed against the one-dimensional, pop-culture trope of the sexy Cold War Bond Girl. Underestimated but undaunted, they fought their way, decade by decade, through adversity to the top of the spy game.

Seamlessly weaving together the individual stories of these exceptional women, Hillsberg deftly tackles not just the fight for gender equality at the CIA but also the current dilemma the Agency faces when dealing with the culmination of a decades-long culture of sexual harassment and assault. Each chapter sheds a light on women’s issues during a different decade before bringing to life the stories of female CIA operations officers whose experiences were emblematic of that given era. In this fascinating and empowering chronicle, Hillsberg takes readers inside the Agency in a way that’s never been done before, paying long-overdue tribute to the survivors and thrivers, the indispensable groundbreakers, and the defiant rabble-rousers who made the choice to change their lives and, in turn, changed history.

About the authors:

Christina Hillsberg (Chicago, IL) is a former CIA intelligence officer and writer. While at the CIA, she wrote analytic assessments for the President, his Cabinet, and other senior level policymakers. Christina specialized in African politics and leaders and was one of the Intelligence Community's few Swahili and Zulu linguists. She later worked in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, clandestinely collecting intelligence from the field. She is the recipient of multiple CIA Exceptional Performance Awards. After leaving the CIA, Christina worked in Information Security at Amazon, where she stood up the company’s first Insider Threat program, created a new global framework to analyze cyber risks, and established new processes to utilize intelligence tradecraft to analyze information security threats. In 2017, she left Amazon to become a writer. She is the author of Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA and License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self Sufficient Kids. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, Harvard Business Review, Parents Magazine, Thrive Global, Parade, and more.

Amanda Montell is a New York Times-bestselling author and iHeart Radio Award-winning podcaster. Her nonfiction books include Cultish, Wordslut, and The Age of Magical Overthinking, which have been praised by The Atlantic, The Economist, NPR, and others. In addition to hosting the hit podcasts Sounds Like A Cult and Magical Overthinkers, Amanda has written for publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Esquire. Amanda holds a degree in linguistics from NYU and lives in Southern California.

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