Reviews for Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents That Changed History

The average rating for Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents That Changed History based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-26 00:00:00 ANTHONY DECESARE The idea of spies and spooks, classified and declassified documents, goes back only about 150 years in the popular imagination. But Thomas B. Allen, in his DECLASSIFED: 50 TOP-SECRET DOCUMENTS THAT CHANGED HISTORY, uses a liberal interpretation of "classification" and takes his survey back to the late 16th Century (Spanish Armada - 1586) up to the very early 21st Century (Bin-Laden Wants to Attack America). The bulk of the documents, unsurprisingly, come from wartime, WWI and WWII probably the leaders. I'd have enjoyed this book more if the chapters had been arranged simply in chronological order, rather than by themes such as "Secrets of War" and "In Defense of the Realm" that did not add as much to my understanding of the field as I had hoped. Therefore, one star off. This is not to say that this book is mere trivia; though -- it's interesting to read but rather like wandering around a rather hastily contrived exhibition gallery. My own favorites include Albert Einstein's 1939 letter to Franklin Roosevelt cautioning FDR that the Germans had the capability of developing an atomic bomb (but was this letter really classified after the end of the war?) and Robert Hansen's 1985 offer to spy for the Soviets. In the not-so-much-fun category, the 1963 exposure of Anthony Blunt as a British spy (the memo still too "redacted" to be coherent); a small part of the "Griswold Brief" in 1973, detailing what the federal government could expect if the "Pentagon Papers" were published (well documented elsewhere, and two pages thereof in this book are close to meaningless). Used copies are plentiful and cheap.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-11-28 00:00:00 Ross Hrinko Cartea reprezintă o culegere de documente desecretizate. Majoritate sunt vechi dar totuși ne ajuta să ne facem o imagine despre complicata lume a spionajului.Nu este atractivă din punct de vedere al modului de prezentare dar are o importanță istorică reală.