half_sugar's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting read. It is enlighting to know what tech they did and did not have, how much of it was bond and how much of it was real. It also had humorous moments which were very well written and appreciated. However it dragged on quite a bit and I felt it repeated itself quite a lot. But worth the read :)
bobbo49's review against another edition
4.0
Second reading (1st in 2009). A detailed overview of the CIA's technology development and use, with numerous specific stories woven into the historical record. I reread this particularly to review the discussion of MK-ULTRA, after reading the new book about Sidney Gottlieb ("Poisoner in Chief"). As I remembered, althoug Spycraft has far less detail about MK-ULTRA itself, overall the book is the opposite of Poisoner in Chief: an unemotional review of the history, and the geopolitical rationale for the various agency technology developments, with some serious criticisms but always in the context of the decision-making times.
rockyroadrocher's review against another edition
2.0
Not well written, but the content is interesting and easier to retain if you take copious, timeline-focused notes. It reads like someone got drunk and decided to tell you the chronology of unclassified/altered/vague CIA historical details ... out of chronology...repeated the same exact details multiple times, including re-using quotations and re-explaining technical jargon, and threw in a bunch of anecdotes from 'this one time' when some person did some thing and there's a 'punchline' at the end.
If I made that sound enjoyable, you're thinking too much along the lines of Drunk History and not enough along the lines of That One Uncle (or whatever) who talks everyone's ear off with the same stories every holiday. Uncle has something to contribute, sure, but jeez, would it kill him to learn how to organize his thoughts?
If I made that sound enjoyable, you're thinking too much along the lines of Drunk History and not enough along the lines of That One Uncle (or whatever) who talks everyone's ear off with the same stories every holiday. Uncle has something to contribute, sure, but jeez, would it kill him to learn how to organize his thoughts?
missbaileyhull's review
3.0
*3.5/5 stars*
Robert Wallace wrote an excellent story of the history and development of the CIA, and more interestingly, spy gadgets and surveillance. This text read like something out of a James Bond movie with pages filled with diagrams of REAL and AUTHENTIC gadgets and tools that the CIA used. Especially during the 20th century, the CIA had spent millions of dollars and loads of time developing new ways to stay just a few steps ahead of Russia and other enemies of the United States at that time. If that is a topic you are interested in, I would highly recommend picking up this novel. It gives a very detailed account of missions of famous spies, as well, that have been uncovered.
Robert Wallace wrote an excellent story of the history and development of the CIA, and more interestingly, spy gadgets and surveillance. This text read like something out of a James Bond movie with pages filled with diagrams of REAL and AUTHENTIC gadgets and tools that the CIA used. Especially during the 20th century, the CIA had spent millions of dollars and loads of time developing new ways to stay just a few steps ahead of Russia and other enemies of the United States at that time. If that is a topic you are interested in, I would highly recommend picking up this novel. It gives a very detailed account of missions of famous spies, as well, that have been uncovered.
missbaileyhull's review against another edition
3.0
*3.5/5 stars*
Robert Wallace wrote an excellent story of the history and development of the CIA, and more interestingly, spy gadgets and surveillance. This text read like something out of a James Bond movie with pages filled with diagrams of REAL and AUTHENTIC gadgets and tools that the CIA used. Especially during the 20th century, the CIA had spent millions of dollars and loads of time developing new ways to stay just a few steps ahead of Russia and other enemies of the United States at that time. If that is a topic you are interested in, I would highly recommend picking up this novel. It gives a very detailed account of missions of famous spies, as well, that have been uncovered.
Robert Wallace wrote an excellent story of the history and development of the CIA, and more interestingly, spy gadgets and surveillance. This text read like something out of a James Bond movie with pages filled with diagrams of REAL and AUTHENTIC gadgets and tools that the CIA used. Especially during the 20th century, the CIA had spent millions of dollars and loads of time developing new ways to stay just a few steps ahead of Russia and other enemies of the United States at that time. If that is a topic you are interested in, I would highly recommend picking up this novel. It gives a very detailed account of missions of famous spies, as well, that have been uncovered.
gobblebook's review against another edition
3.0
There was definitely a lot of interesting information in this book, but it suffers from strange organization, and from incomplete information.
The technological achievements of the CIA and the KGB are quite impressive, and it was fascinating reading about some of the things they created and how they used them. However, the book is very anecdotal, and a lot of the anecdotes peter out at the end... whether that's because the climactic ending is classified, or because Wallace sets them up to be more interesting than they really are is hard to say.
The book suffers from what appear to be several overlapping organizational structures. Sometimes it is chronological, sometimes it is thematic, and sometimes it feels like a bunch of old guys sitting around swapping whatever war stories come to mind. The last few chapters are an overview of spy techniques and how spies use technology, which is really weird - those chapters would have been much more useful at the beginning of the book, but because they were at the end, they re-explain information that has already been covered earlier in the book.
What bothered me the most about the book, though, was the information that was not in it. Perhaps some of this is just my personal agenda, but I would have liked more information about the overall impact of the technology developed and the information intercepted with that technology - in other words, was all of this time and money worth the bother? The book also dropped some tantalizing details (for instance, there is a section that talks about small bombs they developed that could, for instance, go off if suddenly plunged into darkness, so that if they were attached to a train, they would blow the train up when it entered a tunnel), but then didn't talk about how much the technology was actually used (how many trains did we blow up? why?). The book also came across as rather defensive at times - for instance, there are several pages about what MKULTRA was not, but very little information about what it actually was, and whether or not the psychological experiments damaged anyone.
All in all, the book is interesting, but definitely feels like the "official line" and I found the lack of big picture to be unsatisfying.
h_s_gerard's review
5.0
I really liked this book. It was pretty long and there were a few times that one author was just recapping what another had written a few chapters before, but overall I thought this was a fascinating look into spycraft.
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