"The never-before-told story of one woman's heroism that changed the course of the Second World War In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." This spy was Virginia Hall, a young American woman--rejected from the foreign service because of her gender and her prosthetic leg--who talked her way into the spy organization dubbed Churchill's "ministry of ungentlemanly...

"Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a "contract wife," a second-class citizen who was hired as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Switzerland. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to her apartment, and she performed menial duties for the CIA. Despite battling sexism at all levels of the agency, Mendez's talent for espionage was clear, and she soon took on bigger and more significant...

Robert Baer was known inside the CIA as perhaps the best operative working the Middle East. Over several decades he served everywhere from Iraq to New Delhi and racked up such an impressive list of accomplishments that he was eventually awarded the Career Intelligence Medal.  But if his career was everything a spy might aspire to, his personal life was a brutal illustration of everything a spy is asked to sacrifice. Bob had few enduring non-work...

Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials - with the island's residents caught between them. Toiling in the shadows are Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy sent to Pearl Harbor to gather information on the U.S. fleet. Douglas Wada's experiences in his native Honolulu...

This first ever biography of the enigmatic Whittaker Chambers draws on materials from forty archives, including still-classified KGB dossiers, to trace the remarkable journey that led Chambers to center stage in America's greatest political trial. This complex portrait is rich in startling new information about Chambers' years as a Communist agent and then defector, hunted by the KGB; his conversion to Quakerism; his secret sexual turmoil; and his...

The Gestapo is urgently chasing the person they have declared to be the "most dangerous spy" working for the Allies. But she keeps evading them... This the never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, an American spy who changed the course of World War II. Born into a wealthy family in Baltimore, Maryland, from an early age Virginia knew she would never take the path that was expected of her. Instead, relying mostly on her wits and instincts, she would...

"In the wake of World War II, four agents were critical in helping build the CIA. Adelaide Hawkins, Mary Hutchison, Eloise Page, and Elizabeth Sudmeier were ground-breaking agents at the top of their class, instrumental in developing innovative tools for intelligence gathering and insisting that they receive the credit and pay their expertise deserved. Wise Girls sheds a light on the untold history of the women whose persistence and fighting spirit...

A story of a nineteen-year-old woman who disguised herself as a man to avoid an unwanted marriage and who distinguished herself as a male nurse during the Civil War, and later as a spy for the Union Army

"A beautiful, gracious act of connection with a man who kept his secrets." - Kirkus Reviews Readers will not only find absorbing narratives but also the early signs of America's now highly contentious culture wars. - Booklist An exceptional work ... about a man ... whose family album is pasted into a book of American history. - Baltimore Sun A passionately researched and engaging memoir...poignantly distanced. - New York Times Book Review

A picture book biography of Sarah Emma Edmonds, a Canadian-born woman who served as a spy in the Union Army during the Civil War