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Friday, April 4th

Cambridge University Press

Price: $28.00

KRISTIE MACRAKIS discusses Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World

Harvard Book Store is pleased to present historian and Harvard visiting scholar KRISTIE MACRAKIS as she explores the world of one of the most effective and feared spy agencies in history.

More fascinating than fiction, Seduced by Secrets reveals the classified technical methods and sources of the Stasi (East German Ministry for State Security) as it stole secrets from abroad and developed gadgets at home. Seduced by Secrets draws on confidential files from Stasi archives to demonstrate that the Stasi overestimated the power of secrets to solve problems and created an insular spy culture more intent on securing its power than protecting national security.

Macrakis recreates the Stasi's secret world of technology through biographies of agents, defectors, and officers, and by visualizing James Bond–like techniques and gadgets. Macrakis adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Stasi by bringing the topic into the realm of espionage history and exiting the political domain.

CONTACT:

General Info:
617.661.1515

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617.661.1424 ex.1

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Kristie Macrakis lived in Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. An internationally recognized historian, she is a professor at Michigan State University and received her PhD from Harvard University in the history of science. She is the author of Surviving the Swastika (Oxford) and Science under Socialism (Harvard) and is currently a visiting scholar in the Department of History of Science at Harvard. She has appeared on the History Channel. Seduced by Secrets is a History Book Club selection.