Content area
Full Text
Polmar, Norman, and Thomas B. Allen. Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House, 1998. 645pp. $18
Every few years a new encyclopedia of intelligence finds its way into the book stalls. Ronald Seth's Encyclopedia of Espionage (1972), Richard Deacon's Spyclopedia (1987), Mark Lloyd's Guinness Book of Espionage (1994), and Jay Nash's Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia (1997) are typical examples. While entry length and format follow those of the traditional encyclopedia, the basic facts about a given espionage topic often vary with the source. A comparison of the Mata Hari entries for the works just mentioned provides a good illustration of the problem. The reason is straightforward-the general-purpose encyclopedia relies on years of historical scholarship, a factor missing until very recently in the study of espionage. Most authors of espionage encyclopedias rely on secondary or tertiary sources, without further research. In the process they perpetuate their predecessors' errors.
Fortunately, the authors of Spy Book-Norman Polmar, a former editor with Jane's Fighting Ships, and Thomas Allen, previously a senior editor at the National Geographic Society and author of national security books-to a...