Dangerous By Design

Mata Hari danced for kings and died in front of a firing squad - but the truth about what she actually betrayed has been debated by intelligence agencies for a century. Christine Granville survived Nazi interrogations, Allied bureaucracy, and three separate intelligence services, and was murdered in a London hotel stairwell by a man who couldn’t accept that she didn’t love him. Virginia Hall built and rebuilt the French Resistance on one leg and two identities while the Gestapo distributed wanted posters with her face on them. And in the shadow war of the Cold War, women on both sides of the Iron Curtain were recruited, trained, and in some cases sacrificed by services that valued their access more than their survival.These are not supporting characters. They are the story. Drawing on declassified intelligence files, postwar testimony, and decades of historical scholarship, Dangerous By Design brings together twenty true stories of the women who lived double lives during the most dangerous conflicts in history - and who changed the outcome of wars that the history books assigned to men.They were dangerous by design. History just forgot to mention it.