"Mr. Laux brings a raw perspective to the canon. His memoir is not filled with recollections of White House meetings or lengthy defenses of waterboarding. Mr. Laux was thousands of miles from Washington, a grunt in a secret war." - New York Times "The first glimpse of a younger generation of CIA spies whose careers have been defined by the War on Terror. Laux's narrative offers new insights, bludgeoned as they were by agency censors, into how the CIA goes about the business of war zone espionage." - NBC News "Every bit as riveting and even more spellbinding than the best the thriller genre has to offer.

In addition to providing a superb glimpse at the minutia involved in [being a CIA case officer], Left of Boom also does a splendid job of revealing the psychological and emotional costs in undertaking such a dangerous undercover mission." -- Providence Journal "This is an unvarnished, critical look at the inner workings of the CIA.Smith is able to present unique descriptions of the psychological stresses endured by the CIA case officers who are forced to lie to even their closest family and friends about what they do, where they are, and whom they work for. It's a fascinating and engaging look inside the fast-paced and dangerous daily workings of today's CIA." - Publishers Weekly " Left of Boom is a riveting personal story of how a young CIA operative, attached to the National Clandestine Service (NCS) and fresh out of college, managed to actually penetrate into the Talban and Al-Qaeda. This story is absolutely fascinating and provides readers with a very rare look at just how CIA operatives live and work at the tip of the spear." - Don Mann, SEAL Team SIX (ret), co-author of Inside SEAL Team SIX " Left of Boom is a rollicking read that really gets us inside the life and mind of a CIA operations officer." - Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad.