It has been quite sometime that I read a good, originally motivated and meaningful non-fiction book. I have been searching for some good titles and I found a few of them that I will be reading and reviewing in the days to come. To begin with, I had found this wonderful book written by Amit Bagaria, a famous non-fiction author from India who has made a name for himself by writing books on international affairs and political issues. His book that I am going to review is I-Spy: A Peep into the World of Spies.
I-Spy is a book that primarily focuses on bursting the myths related to spies and their lives among the young, cinema-goers class. Including me. We generally think that a spy should be someone living a high profile life like James Bond or Ethan Hunt and making a lot of money and doing whatever he wants. However, Amit tells in his book, a spy is someone who mostly gathers and aliases data and helps his government in keeping the enemies at the bay… sad but true!
The book goes on to explore the lives of spies further and also puts to public display the basic qualities that make someone a good spy. This part will be interesting for many wannabe James Bonds… The book further goes deeper into the operations completed by the leading spy agencies working for governments in the world – MOSSAD, ISI, RAW, CIA, MI6 and so on. This part might sound technical, political and even boring. However, for those who are interested, the book will be a very good read throughout.
Many interesting things that the readers will find in the course of their reading will be surprising for them. Like the Indian readers might be surprised and even raged to know that the author has ranked, on the basis of his knowledge and analysis, the leading intelligence agencies in the world and he thinks that Pakistani agency ISI is better than our RAW and even a few other agencies in the world. For him, CIA is not better than MI6 and so on… so, many things that we take for granted are not represented likely in the book and the readers will find these things in the course of their reading.
In terms of knowledge and information about the operations completed by the intelligence agencies around the world, the largest share of pages is given to CIA, undoubtedly. Moreover, I was also surprised to know many operations done by our own agency RAW, in different nations. So, the book has been an informative and an interesting shift from the regular fiction readings this month. I hope you guys also enjoy the book. I will bring more to your service soon. Till then, enjoy your reading list! Spend time on your reading desk!
Review by Surendra for The Best Books
stay safe!