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The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

by Christopher Andrew (Author), Christopher Andrew (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2018

    $13.82
Synopsis

'Almost every page includes a sizzling historical titbit ... captivating, insightful and masterly' (Edward Lucas, The Times) The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The first mention of espionage in world literature is in the Book of Exodus.'God sent out spies into the land of Canaan'. From there, Christopher Andrew traces the shift in the ancient world from divination to what we would recognize as attempts to gather real intelligence in the conduct of military operations, and considers how far ahead of the West - at that time - China and India were. He charts the development of intelligence and security operations and capacity through, amongst others, Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America, Napoleonic France, right up to sophisticated modern activities of which he is the world's best-informed interpreter. What difference have security and intelligence operations made to course of history? Why have they so often forgotten by later practitioners? This fascinating book provides the answers.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 960
 Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 14 Jun 2018
ISBN 10: 0713993669
ISBN 13: 9780713993660
Book Overview: A stupendous history of intelligence and its uses, showing how it has frequently changed the course of history - by the world's leading historian of intelligence.

Media Reviews
To write a world history of intelligence, from the dawn of recorded history to the present day, is a daunting task. To make such a work accurate, comprehensive, digestible and startling, and all in a single volume, is a stellar achievement. But that is what Christopher Andrew has done in The Secret World. -- Edward Lucas * The Times *
The Secret World is both brilliant in its sweep and near-miraculous in the detail and confident judgements provided on two and a half millennia of spying. It covers everything from the argument for a professional intelligence service in a second-century BC Indian treatise on government, the Arthashastra, to the growth of religiously based terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s. The book is a crowning triumph of one of the most adventurous scholars of the security world -- John Lloyd * Financial Times *
The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled: the author's breadth and depth of knowledge are unrivalled -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times *
Author Bio
Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and former Chair of the Faculty of History at Cambridge University. He is also chair of the British Intelligence Study Group, Founding Co-Editor of Intelligence and National Security, former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Toronto and the Australian National University, and a regular presenter of BBC Radio and TV documentaries. His most recent book, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, was a major international bestseller. His fifteen previous books include The Mitrokhin Archive volumes 1 and 2, and a number of path-breaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.