SECRETS, LIES, GIZMOS, AND SPIES

Illustrated with a fine array of early mini-cameras, hollow-heeled shoes and cleverly disguised weapons displayed at Washington D.C.’s International Spy Museum, this breezy if disjointed tour sweeps from Hammurabi’s palace to Moscow’s Butyrka Prison. Along the way, it peeks at triumphs and milestones in the history of intelligence-gathering while introducing a host of spies, traitors, double and triple agents, spy rings, femme fatales, plots and ploys, all the way down to the recent revelation of the NSA’s Domestic Surveillance Program. Supposedly arranged by topic, it’s a hodge-podge of short passages, photo captions, side essays and glossaries—over-designed, under-edited and sans index, but perfect for random dipping. Coleman focuses on the human side of the story, so budding 007s may want to pair this with the more high-tech oriented likes of Richard Platt’s Eyewitness Spy (2000). (bibliography, illustration credits) (Nonfiction. 10-13)