Spycraft
Spycraft by Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman is one of 2026's most credible books, appearing on 1 of the year's most respected lists, including The Economist, for a Consensus Score of 15 out of 100.
Appears on these lists
Our take
AI-draftedAkkerman and Langman treat espionage under the Tudors and Stuarts as a craft with physical tools rather than an abstraction, walking through invisible inks, cipher wheels, counterfeit seals, and the folding techniques used to lock a letter against tampering. The appendix, offering hands-on instructions for replicating these methods, is what separates it from a standard narrative history of Elizabethan and Jacobean spying.
In the press
“Spycraft is an excellent book, accessibly written, profoundly researched, cleverly illustrated and immensely readable”
Peter Davidson, Literary Review“a classic and incisive monograph...that also manages to be absorbing, illuminating and entertaining”
Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Times Literary Supplement
How the Consensus Score is calculated
Our Consensus Score is our own transparent editorial metric — not a user rating. It weighs each list by the credibility of its source, how recent the listing is, and any award status. Here is the full breakdown.
| Source | Authority | Recency | Award | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Economist | 0.95 | 0.70 | 1.00× | 0.67 |
| Weighted sum → Score | 0.67 → 15 | |||
Similar consensus books
Because they appear on some of the same lists.
Frequently asked
What lists is Spycraft on?
Spycraft appears on 1 list in our 2026 corpus, including The Economist.
What is its Consensus Score?
Spycraft has a Consensus Score of 15 out of 100, our transparent editorial measure of how many credible lists agree on it.