The secret world
Subtitle: a history of intelligence
By: Christopher Andrew
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 948
ISBN-13: 9780300238440
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Intelligence service; Espionage; History
Description: "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 codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful World War II intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors in earlier moments of national crisis had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada. Those who do not understand past mistakes are likely to repeat them. Intelligence is a prime example. At the outbreak of World War I, the grasp of intelligence shown by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was not in the same class as that of George Washington during the Revolutionary War and leading eighteenth-century British statesmen. In this book, the first global history of espionage ever written, distinguished historian Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia--and shows us its relevance."--Page [2] of cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 761-818) and index.