Mata Hari: The True Story

By Russell Warren Howe

Book Overview

Set against the background of turn-of-the-century Paris and the collapse of the Belle Epoque in World War I, this book offers a complete portrait of the famous courtesan Mata Hari who launched strip... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0396087175
• ISBN13: 9780396087175
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Dodd Mead
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Finally -- an objective, factual book about Mata Hari

This is the book to read if you want the real story about Mata Hari. Author Russell Warren Howe, an accomplished journalist, was the first writer to have access to the French Ministry of Defense's dossier on Mata Hari, which had been sealed for 68 years. The documents in that dossier revealed that Mata Hari was nothing more than an ageing courtesan (and former exotic dancer) who became a very amateurish spy for the French in order to support the younger man she hoped to marry. She was set up by German intelligence in retaliation for her swindling them out of some money. French intelligence fell for this, then covered up by falsifying information and allowed her to become a sacrifice to the "spy fever" that then gripped World War I France. Most other books about Mata Hari (such as Major Thomas Coulson's "Mata Hari: Courtesan and Spy") are outright fabrications that perpetuate the false image of her as a treacherous femme fatale who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Allied soldiers. This book reveals what she actually was -- certainly a promiscuous, self-indulgent, foolish woman, but not the master spy of legend.