Customer Reviews

Spying for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence

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This book is a most excellent read. It is good for people casually interested in espionage and those with more background in it. One of the most overlooked areas was the periods between the world wars and the late 19th Century which is well treated. It is also written in a fast paced style that is never boring. I highly recommend this book. I have several other books by the author after reading this one and have been impressed with them all. A definite "can't miss" book.

It is obvious in the first three chapters of this book that there is no original research here. It is simply a matter of going to the library and regurgitating what was already written in secondary sources. Other author's conjectures about the Revolutionary war spying story are simply repeated here, so accurately that one can tell which books they are taken from. It would be permissible to copy the historical fact, but when the old myths and conjecture of past researchers are repeated here as well, along with the fact, that is unacceptable.

John Wortman p.4 The Fine Art of Spying is a collection of true, and truly amazing, stories written by Somerset Maugham, Anthony Abbott, Winston Churchill, Fletcher Pratt, Alan Hynd, Kurt Singer, and other famous authors. But The Fine Art of Spying would not have come together without the editing of Walter B. Gibson. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about clever and incredible strategies that people use when they find themselves in difficult situations. Although The Fine Art of Spying is a book about the exiting events and missions that certain spies go through, the book does not include 100% concentrated action. So, if you are looking for a pointless, plotless, "everybody dies" novel, (which I DO enjoy reading) I don't recommend this book to you. Otherwise I recommend it to anyone. Although this is a great book, it does have a couple of boring parts. There is a story in The Fine Art of Spying entitled "The Traitor." This is one of the book's less enjoyable stories, in fact, I think it is the worst one in the book. "The Traitor" is about one spy trying to get another spy to work for his network. This may sound okay but it wasn't because the first spy did nothing to persuade the other spy. This makes it bad because there was no conflict and without conflict there is no action. Don't worry, however, there are really only two bad stories. "The Traitor" and "Prisoner in the Legation" are those stories, but I found "Prisoner in the Legation" not to be as boring as "The Traitor." There are, however, many good stories in this book. One of my favorites is called "Encounter at Treasure Island." This story is about an ordinary guy who gets tangled up with some Japanese spies and tries to get on the inside of their network and obtain enough information about them to get them arrested and convicted. The Fine Art of Spying is a great collection of some excellent spy stories. I liked this book because most of the stories were extremely exciting and they told what real people have done in actual situations. Many of the strategies that these people thought of I would not have dreamed of, so my attention was held. Even though the interesting aspects varied from story to story, some stories were very boring, while others almost forced the reader to continue. Over all I highly recommend The Fine Art of Spying.