ISBN: 9780684864228
In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-t… Mehr…
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1999, ISBN: 0684864223
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ISBN: 9780684864228
In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-t… Mehr…
1999, ISBN: 0684864223
[EAN: 9780684864228], Gebraucht, sehr guter Zustand, [PU: Free Press], [From the library of Benjamin B. King.] Hardcover and dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Minor shelf wear. Clean, … Mehr…
1999
ISBN: 0684864223
Gebundene Ausgabe
[EAN: 9780684864228], [SC: 9.94], [PU: New York: Free Press, 1998. 0684864223], Jacket, 1st edn 1st printing. 8vo. Original gilt lettered black/grey cloth (VG), dustwrapper (VG in protect… Mehr…
1999, ISBN: 0684864223
[EAN: 9780684864228], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [SC: 23.03], [PU: Free Press], Jacket, Good condition. Very Good dust jacket. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain mar… Mehr…
1999, ISBN: 0684864223
[EAN: 9780684864228], Neubuch, [PU: Free Press], New, Books
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Unfortunately, since the Germans had equal access to the classics--"Reference books," Marks quips, "are jackboots when used by cryptographers"--Marks thought agents should write their own poems (or use his) instead, several of which are cheerily obscene. After all, no son or daughter of the Fatherland could ever know the rest of a verse that began "Is de Gaulle's prick / Twelve inches thick," and continued on in a similar, shall we say, vein. But Marks soon felt that original doggerel was just as dangerous, since even slight misspellings could render messages indecipherable and risk agents' lives. His first solution? WOKs (worked-out keys) printed on silk. An operative would use one key, send the message, and immediately tear off the strip. Marks had a hard time proving that swaths of silk would save his people from swallowing their "optional extra," a cyanide pill. His efforts were dead serious, but often landed him in comic terrain.
In one of the book's great set pieces, Marks visits Colonel Wills--surely the model for Ian Fleming's Q--in order to sort out the best ways to print his code keys. Before solving this minor problem (invisible ink!), Wills showed Marks several new projects--one of which involves an exotic array of dung, courtesy of the London Zoo. This gifted gadgetmeister planned to model life-sized reproductions of these droppings and pack them with explosives, personalized for all parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. "Once trodden on or driven over (hopefully by the enemy) the whole lot would go off with a series of explosions even more violent than the ones which had produced it," Marks explains.
Despite such larky sentences and sections, the author never loses sight of the importance of his vocation, and Between Silk and Cyanide is as elegiac as it is engaging. Marks knows when to cut the laugh track, particularly as his book becomes a despairing record of agents blown--lost to torture, prison, the camps, and execution. Readers will never forget the valor of Violette Szabo, Noor Inayat Kahn, and the White Rabbit himself, Flight Lieutenant Yeo-Thomas. Poem-cracking, as Marks again and again makes clear, was far more than a parlor game. --Kerry Fried
Detailangaben zum Buch - Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945
EAN (ISBN-13): 9780684864228
ISBN (ISBN-10): 0684864223
Gebundene Ausgabe
Erscheinungsjahr: 1999
Herausgeber: Free Press
Buch in der Datenbank seit 2007-06-02T21:28:24+02:00 (Berlin)
Detailseite zuletzt geändert am 2024-03-24T22:17:19+01:00 (Berlin)
ISBN/EAN: 0684864223
ISBN - alternative Schreibweisen:
0-684-86422-3, 978-0-684-86422-8
Alternative Schreibweisen und verwandte Suchbegriffe:
Autor des Buches: leo marks, per leo
Titel des Buches: war, silk maker, between silk and cyanide, 1945
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