Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi's Spy-Tech World | 
| Author: Kristie Macrakis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy New: $6.75
You Save: $21.25 (76%)
New (42) Used (12) from $5.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 109378
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 392
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 052188747X
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.12431009045
EAN: 9780521887472
ASIN: 052188747X
Publication Date: March 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New Books! Orders usually ship with 24 hours!
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
More fascinating than fiction, Seduced by Secrets takes the reader inside the real world of one of the most effective and feared spy agencies in history. The book reveals, for the first time, the secret technical methods and sources of the Stasi (East German Ministry for State Security) as it stole secrets from abroad and developed gadgets at home, employing universal, highly guarded techniques often used by other spy and security agencies. Seduced by Secrets draws on secret files from the Stasi archives, including CIA-acquired material, interviews and friendships, court documents, and unusual visits to spy sites, including "breaking into" a prison, to demonstrate that the Stasi overestimated the power of secrets to solve problems and created an insular spy culture more intent on securing its power than protecting national security. It recreates the Stasi's secret world of technology through biographies of agents, defectors, and officers and by visualizing James Bond-like techniques and gadgets. In this highly original book, Kristie Macrakis adds a new dimension to our understanding of the East German Ministry for State Security by bringing the topic into the realm of espionage history and exiting the political domain.
Book Description
Seduced by Secrets reveals the secret technical sources and methods of the Stasi (East German Ministy for State Security). Based on prodigious research in the Stasi archives, Seduced by Secrets enters the Stasi's secret world of technology through biographies of agents, defectors, and officers.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 Secrets of the Stazi! June 25, 2008
This book contains some very interesting information and I was very curious to read it. What makes it difficult to read is that the very technical nature of the writing and the dryness of the writing style. Reading it was difficult for me to retain the information though I read it within a day. I suspect the problem is that the information comes almost solely from the Stazi files. There is little humanity to attach the stories too. It is amazing what people did to spy on other people and what lengths they had to go through to get information. I found the discussion of spying during the advent of computers and the machinery made up for spying the most interesting. How ironic that now it is as easy as having an MP3 recorder and a cell phone. The section on the scentific creation of forensic science using dogs and smells were interesting too. Obviously there must be a problem with it or it would be used more today. I learned from the book and was glad I read it but it felt more like medicine rather than enjoyment.
Shining a light into some dark corners June 19, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
After the fall of the USSR there was a period of time when the doors of the Soviet archives (KGB in particular) were thrown open for research and review. Although those doors did not remain open permanently and access to Soviet archives is now more difficult enough information was made available for a host of historians and academics to create a whole host of books on life in the Soviet Union. The doors opened in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) as well although it always seemed that the focus there was on the creation and maintenance of a society in which it seemed as if almost every East German citizen was either the provider of information to the GDR or the target of surveillance by the GDR's security forces, primarily through one of its security organs known as the STASI. The brilliant film Lives of Others really captures the essence of this focus on the Big Brother is Watching you nature of life in the GDR.
Kristie Macrakis has taken her thorough and exhaustive research into newly available DDR archives and has taken a fresh look at the technological and other tools used by the STASI to pursue its goals. The result is a highly-detailed and informative book. The book is divided into two parts. The first takes a look at the methods used by the STASI in obtaining information. Although it touches on the technical aspects of spying it really focuses on the mechanics of spying. Macrakis focuses more on story-telling here; one could almost call it the human-interest side of spying. As such this first part flowed pretty smoothly for me. The second part takes a far more technical, scientific look at the technology of spy craft. It is precise and provides minute details of the weapons, gadgets, and advanced tools used, developed, or stolen by the STASI. It was here that the story, through no fault of Ms. Macrakis bogged down a bit for me. I love the gadgets, I love reading about them. But as a product of an education that focused too much on the humanities and not enough on the hard sciences I struggled with some of the details. I think anyone with a more technical bent than me will get through the material with ease.
Ultimately, I was very pleased with Seduced by Secrets. It provided me with a wealth of information that was pretty much all knew to me and shined some much needed light on one aspect of life in the GDR. Recommended. L. Fleisig
 Seduced By Knowledge June 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Kristie Macrakis's book SEDUCED BY SECRETS, lives up to its title. This report of papers from the East German Ministry for State Security, Stasi, after the fall of the Berlin Wall at times reads like a glorified term paper then at other times reads like a real page turner. Unfortunately, there are other time when it is confusing, and, even worse, boring.
As a member of the "James Bond' Nation," having read all the Ian Fleming books and seen all the movies, I am one who is "seduced by secrets, but Ms. Macrakis shows us that, like John Le Carre's THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, spying is often boring...until one gets caught! The notion of the fast life, fast women/men, and danger at every corner-type of life does not exist except in the movies and in some adventure books. And while spying by governments for other government secrets still exists, it is the industrial spy who has offered the East Germans and Soviets the greatest reward for their. So much so, that the East Germans fell behind in their technological development because they could "steal" technology instead of coming-up with their own. So much so that when the Berlin Wall fell, East Germany's industries were way behind in developing their scientists.
This is an interesting book, and I would recommend it to anyone who truly wants to know what "real" spies, for the most part, do.
For me, the best parts of the book were the sections that covered "why" a scientist or government worker decided to spy for another country, and the section on "Invisible Ink," while I at first questioned, my it was so long, turned-out to be very interesting.
The book's readability suffers from the author's constantly giving the reader an almost word-for-word account of what was written in the reports she read, and it may be a small point, but one I found annoying, is her use of both "MfS" and "Stasi" as abbreviations for the East German Ministry for State Security. While various spy organizations used one or the other, I didn't think it helped the book for Ms. Macrakis to vary what she called it.
 Spys stuff May 27, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Americans have always had a fascination with and a fear of spy culture. In the popular imagination as portrayed in print fiction and film, operatives are suave, coldblooded, fearless and clever and their clandestine lives are filled with intrigue and danger at all times. Shows such as "Alias" depict a world so far removed from the rest of us that we could scarcely imagine it if we even knew. Kristie Makrakis' book, "Seduced by Secrets" opens a portion of that world to the average citizen, revealing a community that is intimately wedded to creative and sometimes diabolical technologies, but eminently steeped in human error, imperfections and the mundane realities of the detail-oriented business of information extraction. Makrakis' painstaking and thorough research about one of the most famous spy organizations of the 20th century, East Germany's Stasi, is an invaluable source of information about spy culture, but also an incisive critique of the role of science and technology to save us, at least as far as politics and international relations are concerned. The book examines this opaque world in two distinct parts: first, by detailing the East Germans' efforts to acquire technology, even (or especially) through theft; and second by revealing the complicated set of technologies themselves that the Stasi believed would provide East Germany with strategic predominance on the world scene. With this structure, the reader gets both a sense of the personalities involved in the struggle as well as a complete description of specific means the East German government employed to observe the enemy, track the enemy and communicate discreetly about the enemy. For example, the reader learns about invisible ink and secret writing formulas that are revealed for the first time. A historian of science and technology, Makrakis clearly has done her homework, sparing the rest of us from poring over all the classified documents recently made available about this period behind the Iron Curtain. If you are interested in the reality of how spies complete their missions, or are a technology wonk who can't get enough of decryption, surveillance and surreptitious photography, this book will surely prove to be an essential component of your library.
demystifying May 26, 2008
I was a little surprised when I read some of the reviews of this book, but then perhaps I shouldn't be. We all would like the world of "spies" to be endlessly intriguing, labyrinthine,and shrouded with a mystery that cannot quite be solved. Seduced by Secrets, while toying, at times, with this cultural assumption, also overturns it.
For instance, I was impressed by the story of agent Gorbachev, who was a fairly ordinary engineer and administrator turned to spying simply by a need for money. He brought a huge quantity of documents to the Stasi simply by taking commuter trains. He did not use a tiny camera to take pictures of the documents, but simply brought the documents to the Stasi, and returned them to work the next day. When he was told he was in mortal danger and should flee, he went back home and went to work in the morning. Espionage becomes a routine second job that pays really well.
It turns out too that even if the Stasi were effective, and dreadful in many ways, the regime they served was dysfunctional. Secrets were stolen, but little was done with them. Corruption, inertia, the demoralizing effects of living in a terror-filled and drab state, kept the state's intentions, good or evil, from coming to pass. Seduced by Secrets studies a somewhat effective agency within a crumbling non-nation.
Even the invisible ink chapter, so talked about among the reviews, performs a similar demystification. Espionage agencies guard the recipes, but it turns out with some persistence you can make the stuff.
So, I think this a very interesting book, not quite the one I expected, because I've seen the Bond and Bourne movies. Instead, Macrakis shows us real people, making a history that is shaggy, sometimes circular, not always wanting to hold to the form that we would give it. And that makes this valuable history and a worthwhile read.
|
|
|
