Autobiography of a spy [Hardcover]

Mary Bancroft (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Morrow; 1st edition (1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688020194
• ISBN-13: 978-0688020194
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #887,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mary Bancroft the adroit and sensual spy, February 20, 2006

By 

Laurence Daley (Corvallis, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Autobiography of a spy (Hardcover)

Bancroft, Mary 1983. Autobiography of a spy. William Morrow and Company. Inc. New York. ISBN 0688020194

This is a very informative and sensual book, providing insights and links between seemingly different events. This book contains detail after detail of rare and varied historical information. Aside from the routine of spy-craft there are endless enlightening data. Bancroft's description of the sugar mill and port town of Antilla, and Banes the birthplace of Fulgencio Batista, in eastern Cuba and the life, mores and conditions of those places in Cuba are vivid, if sometimes uninformed. One realizes, without mention of names, she is dealing with people like Angel Castro, father of Fidel, and his business of importing seasonal contract labor from Haiti to work in the cane fields. Bancroft describes vivid characters such as the "minor" Rumanian Prince whose ambition was to open a high class brothel over a hat shop in Paris, and the genocidal horrors of the Yugoslavian conflicts. She explains in matter of fact tactful tones the amorality of her spy trade, the exploitation of diverse sexuality, and the realities of survival of the "international" of desperately arrogant gay diplomats cooperating across borders, betraying their countries in order protect themselves, are described discretely. Her contacts with and instruction by Carl Gustav Jung, her lovers and husbands, her uncaring braveness, the casual skill with which she does her job, and arranges her employment by and affair with Allen Dulles, are erotic without being explicit.