TheCodeBreakers
Secret and Urgent, published in 1939, suffers from a severe case of this special pleading. Pratt writes
thrillingly—perhaps for that very reason—but his failure to consider the other factors, together with his
errors and omissions, his false generalizations based on no evidence, and his unfortunate predilection for
inventing facts vitiate his work as any kind of a history. (Finding this out was disillusioning, for it was this
book, borrowed from the Great Neck Library, that interested me in cryptology.) I think that although trying
to balance the story with the other factors may detract a little from the immediate thrill, it charges it with
authenticity and hence makes for long-lasting interest: for this is how things really happened.
In the same vein, I have not made up any conversations, and my speculations about things not a matter
annaabi.ee 
