"I Lie for a Living: Greatest Spies of All Time", by The International Spy Museum and Antony Shugaar, is a fun introduction to the history of espionage! It contains over 50 stories of the greatest spies, their tradecraft, and their impact on the world. Each writeup is 2-3 pages, often including a picture and some of the spies greatest accomplishments, as well as their blunders. I paid
$5 for the book on Amazon and it is well worth that value at ~200 richly colored pages. That said, I only give it 5 out of 10 stars, for providing a fun list of some of the greatest spies of all time, but ultimately lacking any depth on such an intriguing subject. But if your into spy stuff then I can't recommend this book enough, because it's so cheap and easy to pick up in a single sitting. It makes for an excellent coffee table or bathroom read, unless your a real spy. I personally love that the IC is putting out more reading material every year, as I think everyone benefits from studying historic actors and tradecraft. The book is written largely from an American perspective, often relating historic events to more current events with an impact in American history for relevance to the modern audience. However the book takes an unbiased approach to each spy, presenting them in a neutral light, despite any traitorous events or which team they played for. Some of my favorite chapters are those on the Spymasters, the Spycatchers, and the Masters of Tradecraft. Some of my favorite spies include Washington, Donovan, Turing, Thermin, and Kitson, just to name a few. I also like that the book tells you how each spy met their end, a few of whom are still living. Below are the chapters of the book, they are extremely relevant as you can see all of the spies that the book highlights:
Foreword
Introduction
Spymasters:Francis Walsingham
Cardinal Richelieu
George Washington
Allan Pinkerton
William Donovan
Allen Dulles
Markus Wolf
Selfish Spies:Benedict Arnold
Alfred Redl
Sidney Reily
Elyesa Banza (Cicero)
Christopher Boyce
John Walker
Ron Pelton
Aldrich Ames
Earl Edwin Pitts
Robert Hanssen
Spies With A Cause:Nathan Hale
Richard Sorge
Juan Pujol Garcia
George Blake
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Kim Philby
Dimitri Polyakov
Pham Xuan An
Vitaly Yurchenko
Femme Fatales:Aphra Behn
Sarah Edmonds
Belle Boyd
Mata Hari
Virginia Hall
Mathilde Carre
Spycatchers:William Melville
Feliks Dzerzhinsky
J. Edgar Hoover
James Jesus Angelton
Peter Wright
Masters of Tradecraft:William Reginald Hall
Herbert O. Yardley
Alan Turing
Leon Theremin
Antonio Mendez
Masks of Celebrity:Beumarchais
Harriet Tubman
Moe Berg
Josephine Baker
Sterling Hayden
Mirror Writers:Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Benjamin Franklin
Erskine Childers
Graham Greene
Ian Fleming
John le Carre
Agents of Influence:William Wiseman
Harry Dexter White
Katrina Leung
Covert Actors and Wetworkers:Edward Lansdale
Ramon Mercader
Frank Kitson
Dominique Prieur
Oliver North
