A Letter for
 Young Historians

When I was a young historian, my sisters and I were obsessed with anything spy-related. We had all the gadgets: pens that had secret compartments, night vision goggles, written codes, a secret language, and a weird listening device that promised to help us hear conversations from another room
(guess what, it didn’t work!).

When our historian, Heidi, suggested we do this issue about the history of espionage, I jumped at the idea. This was a subject I knew kids would love to learn about and something that is not taught in the classroom often.

Like many of the topics we discuss in the magazine, we had trouble narrowing down which stories to include. There are so many spies and spy stories throughout history, so we had to go through pages and pages (and pages) of research before we found the stories we thought would interest our readers the most.

If there’s one thing I learned after researching this issue, it’s that the job of a spy is not nearly as interesting as I had previously thought. Perhaps with the exception of the agents in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, being a spy was a rather dull experience. We learned that many spies waited for hours on end to hear something important to report back. Imagine all the uninteresting things they must have heard!

While I’m perfectly content not being a spy, we wanted to give you, our young historians, the opportunity to learn what it takes to become a spy, learn about famous spies throughout history, and view the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency requirements for becoming a spy. We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we loved researching and writing it.
As always, happy reading! Cheers,

Editor-In-Chief