This collection highlights the work of emerging scholars in the field of intelligence history. The book combines notable essays, particularly from graduate students at the University of Edinburgh, with curation by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Andrew Lownie. The colllected essays focus on the early years of intelligence services in Canada, the United States, and Britain. Useful book for getting a sense of new directions in research in the growing subfield of intelligence history.

I am hard pressed to believe that there is someone not interested in spies and with this book it was really interesting to take a look at spies from North American instead of their European counterparts.

North American Spies: New Revisionist Essays edited by Rhodri Jeffrey-Jones and Andrew Lownie
This book was not what I expected but at the same time I found some of the essays very rewarding to read. I was expecting more analysis of North American Spies post WW Ii and less academic essays going back to Colonial times.
The most interesting essay to me was by Kate Fletcher of the U. of Edinburgh who compared American to British fictional novels since WW II. Some of her points were very interesting as well as identifying some American authors I did not know.
She suggests “Spy fiction can be seen as an index to social and political attitudes which reflects the degree of political sophistication and maturity in the intelligence community, in society and of course the authors of the spy novels themselves.” Given that the British were more advanced in spying than the US up to and threw WW II, it is no wonder that American bought into the James Bond novels far more than the British and that Americans authors mimicked this style for many years.
WW II and then the Cold War perhaps turned spy novels into showing the value of spies. Even though in my opinion many of the better spy books serve no global role and are merely part of the “Lesser Game” of spy vs. spy.
With the passing of sensational spy fiction to more realistic, the story often contains actual policy issues confronting the government. And the agents are often less about guns and more about numbers. Two examples are Six Days of the Condor by James Grady and The Amateur by Robert Littell.
We have also seen journalist enter the espionage filed where their freedom to express their opinion without editorial oversight on the factual accuracy can’t be questioned. A very good example of a journalist turned spy novelist is David Ignatius
Finally, from John le Carre, “the spy story was not invented by the Cold War and will not be finished off by the ending of it.” Agreed! And now we have Cold War 2.0. I look forward to more spy novels occurring in China.
All in all the book was a disappointment for me except for the essay by Dr. Fletcher.

This is a fascinating and well-written exploration of espionage throughout North America, however, I did find it slightly lacking in more up to date knowledge; of course, many details about recent spy operations will not be accessible for fear of revealing some of the CIA’s tactics, but I do believe it could've been a little more up to date than it was. Other than that minor quibble I found the information included riveting, an unusual occurrence for a nonfiction title, and it was clear early on that Jeffreys-Jones has extensive knowledge of this topic. If you're interested in espionage activities dating back many, many years then this is certainly worth your time.

Since I'm not an expert on spy history I can't speak to how accurate the book is, but I quite enjoyed it. It was particularly interesting to see different writers deal with the very difficult question of how to give objective historical accounts of a secret activity. Even if you're not a spy history fan, I dare you not to interested in a sentence like "Spain's Montreal spy ring of 1898 deserves another look."