Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies
The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al-Qaeda
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Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies
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Narrated by:
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Robert E. Prout
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By:
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Kristie Macrakis
About this listen
Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies is the first history of invisible ink and secret communications revealed through thrilling stories about scoundrels and heroes and their ingenious methods for concealing messages. Spies were imprisoned or murdered, adultery unmasked, and battles lost because of faulty or intercepted secret communications. Yet, successfully hidden writing helped save lives, win battles, and ensure privacy; occasionally it even changed the course of history.
Kristie Macrakis combines a storyteller's sense of drama with a historian's respect for evidence in this pause-resisting history of intrigue and espionage, love and war, magic and secrecy. From the piazzas of ancient Rome to the spy capitals of the Cold War, Macrakis' global history reveals the drama and importance of invisible ink. From Ovid's advice to use milk for illicit love notes, to John Gerard's dramatic escape from the tower of London aided by orange juice ink messages, to al-Qaeda's hidden instructions in pornographic movies, this book presents spellbinding stories of secret messaging that chart its evolution in sophistication and its impact on history.
The book includes fun kitchen chemistry recipes for listeners to try out at home.
©2014 Kristie Macrakis (P)2015 Kristie MacrakisListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,837
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,461
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,452
In the chaos following World War II, the US government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Osenberg list
- By Jean on 08-07-14
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Spycraft
- The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda
- By: Robert Wallace, Henry Robert Schelsinger
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 19 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,067
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 670
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Story4 out of 5 stars 675
Now, in the first book ever written about this ultrasecretive department, the former director of OTS teams up with an internationally renowned intelligence historian to give listeners an unprecedented look at the devices and operations deemed "inappropriate for public disclosure" by the CIA just two years ago.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unique, informative history of the CIA
- By Richard on 07-29-08
By: Robert Wallace, and others
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Wise Gals
- The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage
- By: Nathalia Holt
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 158
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 145
In the wake of World War II, four agents were critical in helping build a new organization that we now know as the CIA. Adelaide Hawkins, Mary Hutchison, Eloise Page, and Elizabeth Sudmeier, called the “wise gals” by their male colleagues because of their sharp sense of humor and even quicker intelligence, were not the stereotypical femme fatale of spy novels.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Intriguing untold history
- By Andrea Guzman on 12-15-22
By: Nathalia Holt
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Phenomena
- The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,231
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,102
For more than 40 years, the US government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the navy, air force, and army - and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, for the first time, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenally mediocre narration of a good book
- By philip on 05-18-17
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Operation Whisper
- The Capture of Soviet Spies Morris and Lona Cohen
- By: Barnes Carr
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
In Operation Whisper, Barnes Carr tells the true story of the most effective Soviet spy couple in America, a pair who vanished under the FBI's nose only to turn up posing as rare book dealers in London, where they continued their atomic spying. The Cohens were talented, dedicated, worldly spies - an urbane, jet-set couple loyal to their service and their friends. Most people they met seemed to think they represented the best of America. The Soviets certainly thought so.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Too many facts details
- By Rebecca C. Browne on 10-02-17
By: Barnes Carr
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Hunting Evil
- The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice
- By: Guy Walters
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 18 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Story4 out of 5 stars 113
From its haunting chronicle of the monstrous mass murders the Nazis perpetrated and the murky details of their postwar existence to the challenges of hunting them down, Hunting Evil is a monumental work of nonfiction written with the pacing and intrigue of a thriller.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Eye-opening and riveting
- By Ellen on 10-20-10
By: Guy Walters
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The Man Who Loved China
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 605
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 372
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 373
No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire.
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5 out of 5 stars
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turn your watch back 70 years
- By Andy on 05-22-08
By: Simon Winchester
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Into the Lion's Mouth
- The True Story of Dusko Popov: Word War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 231
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 215
James Bond has nothing on Dusko Popov. A double agent for the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI during World War II, Popov seduced numerous women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot, all while maintaining his cover as a Yugoslavian diplomat....
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2 out of 5 stars
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A boring account of exciting events.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-30-18
By: Larry Loftis
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Spymaster
- Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief
- By: Tennent H. Bagley
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 771
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 691
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Story4 out of 5 stars 689
From the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he “handled” American and British defectors, recruited Western operatives as double agents, served as a ranking officer at the East Berlin and Vienna KGB bureaus, and tackled special assignments from the Kremlin.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An brilliant personal Cold War perspective
- By Iamnotaspy on 01-09-15
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Agent Sniper
- The Cold War Superagent and the Ruthless Head of the CIA
- By: Tim Tate
- Narrated by: Tim Tate
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For two and a half years at the end of the 1950s, as a Lt. Colonel at the top of Poland’s espionage service, he smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, as well as 160 rolls of microfilm, out from behind the Iron Curtain. In January 1961, he abandoned his wife and children and made a dramatic defection across divided Berlin with his East German mistress to the safety of American territory.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very entertaining cold war spy story
- By Jason on 12-18-21
By: Tim Tate
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Operation Mincemeat
- How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,616
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,123
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,133
Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans. In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated - Operation Mincemeat.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Better than the movie
- By Jack M on 06-23-10
By: Ben Macintyre
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Spies in the Family
- An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War
- By: Eva Dillon
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 292
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 259
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 259
In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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LOVED it!
- By SaraofDI on 11-06-17
By: Eva Dillon
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The Ghost
- The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 501
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 431
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 429
In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton's dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency's MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Flawed Superpatriot
- By Bubblehog on 11-23-17
By: Jefferson Morley
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Hunting Hitler
- New Scientific Evidence That Hitler Escaped Nazi Germany
- By: Jerome Corsi
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 383
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 340
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 336
In 2009, three US professors with access to Adolf Hitler’s alleged remains startled the world with scientific DNA proof that the skull and bones that Russia had claimed since the end of World War II were Hitler’s actually belonged to a middle-aged woman whose identity remains unknown.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I was taken aback ...
- By Benedict on 02-13-14
By: Jerome Corsi
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Stealing the Mystic Lamb
- The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece
- By: Noah Charney
- Narrated by: John Allen Nelson
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece is on any art historian's list of the 10 most important paintings ever made. Often referred to by the subject of its central panel, the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, it represents the fulcrum between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also the most frequently stolen artwork of all time.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
- By Jody R. Nathan on 01-04-12
By: Noah Charney
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Operation Columba - The Secret Pigeon Service
- The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe
- By: Gordon Corera
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Belgium Pigeon
- By Don Rottiers on 08-10-21
By: Gordon Corera
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In the Enemy's House
- The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 360
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 311
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 312
In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation's military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage - the atomic bomb.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Excellent non-fiction spy story
- By Katherine on 10-13-18
By: Howard Blum