Top 10 greatest spies in history
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The Greatest True Spy Stories
When I first started thinking about writing a spy novel, I read every book I could find about espionage. From Kim to Ashenden to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, along with every book that became a film starring Michael Caine. Having spent several years steeped in spies, I can honestly say that in books, real life is better than fiction. The best books I’ve discovered about espionage are not novels, but non-fiction works about actual spies and their remarkable, deadly exploits. These books are darker than Smiley. Funnier than Bond. More extreme than Jason Bourne.
Here are my favorite, stranger than fiction, utterly gripping, non-fiction books about real spies.
Operation Krondstadt, by Harry Ferguson
This extraordinary book rockets through the founding of Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) by Mansfield Smith-Cumming in the early years of the 20th century. Cumming is an unforgettable character – the great-great grandson of the founder of the East India Company, he was born to wealth and prone to florid d
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Julia Child
“Bon appétit” became the familiar catchphrase of celebrity chef Julia Child. But decades earlier, before sharing culinary secrets, she worked directly for OSS chief William Donovan as part of America’s wartime spy agency.
Child was one of only a few female OSS employees deployed to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and China, where she tracked highly classified documents as Chief of the OSS Registry. Though downplaying her role as “only a lowly file clerk,” she received an Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service.
Fun Fact: In 1943, Child worked with zoologist Captain Harold J. Coolidge to develop a shark repellent for the OSS. However, it was more effective at boosting US Navy morale than driving sharks away.
Explore her story in the Museum's Spying in WWII exhibit.
Moe Berg
Professional baseball player Moe Berg was a third-string catcher…and a first-rate spy for US intelligence, sent behind enemy lines during WWII.
The Second World War (1939-1945) touched people from every walk of life. And people from every wal
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5 Famous Codebreaking Spies Who Changed History
American cryptanalyst Elizabeth Smith Friedman
Groundbreaking codebreaker and Shakespeare enthusiast Elizebeth Friedman was admiring one of the Bard’s folios at Chicago’s Newberry Library when a contact offered to introduce her to George Fabyan. The eccentric millionaire was convinced Sir Francis Bacon had planted a cipher within Shakespeare’s texts indicating Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Fabyan hired Elizabeth to get to the bottom of it.
It was the start of an illustrious career. America's first female cryptanalyst and her husband, William Friedman, headed the Riverbank Department of Ciphers in WWI and developed many principles of modern cryptology.
During Prohibition, she broke codes used by drug runners, alcohol smugglers, and mobsters including Al Capone. Her biggest achievement, however, was uncovering a Nazi spy ring operating across South America in 1943.
Polish codebreaker Marian Rejewski
After graduating with a degree in mathematics, Marian Adam Rejewski taught
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