Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage

by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen

Book Overview

Chronicles the history of international espionage, from ancient times to the present day. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679425144
• ISBN13: 9780679425144
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Random House Reference Publishing
• Length: 633 Pages
• Weight: 2.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 7.7" x 9.6"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7

Customer Reviews

Politically correct history

This book was written with the cooperation of the establishment. As a result it is somewhat biased. For instance we are not told in the article about Angelton that he was kicked out for being a failure at his job. During the last 10 years of his career, every Soviet defector that he claimed was genuine was a Soviet plant. Every one he claimed was a plant was genuine. After he was fired his safe was cut open and found to contain many year old evidence that he did not act on but when followed up was used to catch several Soviet spies. The article on Agee, who was a despicable person, falsely claims that he was the one who first revealed the identity of the Athens CIA head of station. Several heads of station had lived in the same house. Every taxi driver knew the identity. The house was the worst possible choice for a CIA person to live in. It was at the end of a dead end street and was so secluded that any illegal activities such as kidnapping or murder would go un-witnessed by others.The author gives misleading information to the effect that once the contents of a classified photo appear in some other public photo the classified photo should be declassified. This would allow the method of taking the photo to be deduced and future photos of equipment using that method would be blocked.

It says "Encyclopedia" in the Title.

I never read this book, but just wanted to comment on some of the comments given for this book. When you pick up an Encyclopedia, you don't expect to read it like a Novel. You want to look up a certain thing which you're interested in learning about. So, this is the Encyclopedia of Espionage. I hope none of you expected it to read like a Novel. Sorry to those who thought I was going to comment on the book.Steve

Outstanding reference book

While there are some minor problems in the book: Polmar and Allen don't report that a German Commerce Raider intercepted an Australian freighter heading for London on 4/42. Inside a captured diplomatic pouch was proof that the US and England had decoded JN-25. The Germans didn?t tell the Japanese until 8/42 about this major breech in their codes, after the Battle of Midway. The Japanese promptly changed their JN-25 codes. Also, it is now known that Nosenko and Fedora were both phony Soviet disinformation defectors and that Dimitri Polyakov and Anatoly Golitsyn were bona fide Soviet defectors. This is a major change in the thrust of this book! But, overall this is the best spy reference book ever written. It includes the American Revolution, Civil War, the World Wars and even long forgotten information about the world's 2nd oldest profession. I found the item about Benjamin Franklin's secretary in Paris, fascinating. He was a spy for King George. It is entirely possible that Franklin used this spy to pass on NEGATIVE intelligence to King George.

An informative book on espionage

This book is a great book if you are looking for a certain piece of information. It isn't the type of book you sit down and read for an hour. It is very informative and contains a lot of entries about spy equipment, agencies, and operations of a spy.

Hmmm.... Food for thought

Well, they certainly did give good detailed explanations of this book, but, I think you would only enjoy this if you are looking for something to pass the time with or are just skimming for facts. It is not something I would like to read cover to cover because it includes, I think, too many people, or descriptions of people who we have never even heard of or don't even care about! If you don't like or don't agree with my review,....Stop Reading it!!!!