The Secret World of Espionage

By: Alma Katsu, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Lynne Olson, Richard Spence, Hugh Wilford, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Alma Katsu, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Lynne Olson, Richard Spence, Hugh Wilford

Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

The world of espionage is shrouded in mystery—even to those in it—but so much of what we think we know about spy craft is rooted in pop culture. Even though the true nature of espionage is quite different, that doesn’t mean history’s real spies are any less heroic, or less fascinating.

In these nine episodes, go behind the shadows with a distinguished panel of historians—including a former intelligence case officer—in search of the secret meeting places, complex codes, stealth observations, and cutting-edge technologies spies have used throughout history. 

You’ll discover how spies gather different sources of intelligence information; how spies exploit the social expectations of their times (including gender) to avoid scrutiny and suspicion; how spies use 21st-century tech tools to gather and analyze granular information; and even how spies, unlike many of their fictional counterparts, learn to be “forgettable” while on the job.

You’ll also encounter men and women who, unlike James Bond, are very much real: Sir Francis Walsingham, Peggy Shippen, Antoine Rossignol, William Stefanson, Kim Philby, Aldridge Ames—their stories of daring (including close calls and even double-crosses) are enough to pack this series with plenty of adventure and intrigue.

This series will change the way you think about how intelligence agencies, from MI6 to the CIA, operate both in the shadows and sometimes even in plain sight. Think of it as history seen through the eyes of spies.

©2022 The Great Courses (P)2022 The Teaching Company, LLC

Not your typical great courses lecture

this is more similar to History channel documentaries in presentation where they cut back and forth between different people talking about different aspects of the same topic. nothing wrong with that format, it has its place and I even occasionally enjoy that format, but I prefer the more traditional lecture format that I look for with Great courses.

Not worthy of “The Great Courses” name

Clearly, this course was a change in direction for The Great Courses. Let me delineate my disappointments:

1) This is AUDIBLE and audio rules the day. So, when random voices pop-up without introduction and without qualification, it immediately disorients you from the subject matter. Perhaps, in video, a graphic with their name and position might have popped up, but in audio it’s just a random set of people talking. To this day, I have no clue who any presenter was and why they should be in the course. It’s like reading a textbook of random quotes without attribution.

2) The approach was elementary and not up to the more rigorous academic standards of the dozens of other TGCs I have bought. This felt like a bad Discovery Channel “documentary.” The producer of this course clearly has no regard for the intellectual maturity of their listener. I half-way expected the big haired UFO idiot to be one of the many unidentified voices in this course.

3) The coverage of the cyber realm was tertiary and dated. But, given the reasons above, I shouldn’t have expected better by the time they slam cyber security issues into the shortest episode at the end of the series.

Seriously, I have never written a review for Audible, but I was so absolutely incensed by this poor course. I ended up “hate-listening” to this disaster, which is the only palatable manner to digest this mess.

Save your money or credits. I’m asking for a refund.

This mess does not belong in the Great Courses

I’ve been a customer of The Great Courses for over twenty years. Their excellence has been uniform.

Each course was structured and detailed like a real college course. Sources and methods were discussed. Each lecture was on a focused set of topics, with clear progression and cross-connection between topics. Nearly all had the focus of being taught by a single instructor - the notable exception being the excellent Divine Comedy course by two professors who have long team taught that course and finish each other’s sentences

This course is a hot mess, with no clear organization, multiple disconnected lecturers and poor attention to detail. The qualifications of the ores enters are not summarized at the start.

At one moment one voice is talking about ore-WW2 British MI recruitment - abruptly it switches to fictional spies. One voice says that most spy novelists aren’t from the trade - but none mention when comparing James Bond and George Smiley that both Fleming and Le Carre had professional intelligence backgrounds. Did that inform their novels? We’ll never know from this course

Sidney Reilly is brought up and it is claimed he exaggerated his exploits - well, what did we know about them from other sources? Nothing discussed here - just a quick jump to the next topic

And so on. It might be acceptable for a third rate podcast brand or maybe an MTV “documentary” - but not The Great Courses. This isn’t a university level treatment and just damages the brand