Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Espionage

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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.

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.

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

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!!!!