War of shadows : codebreakers, spies, and the secret struggle to drive the Nazis from the Middle East / Gershom Gorenberg.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Report for Duty, in Accordance With the Instructions You Have Received" -- The Seductive Curves of the Dunes -- Next King of the Nile -- The Machine Is the Future -- The Flaw in the Machine is the Man -- The Oracles -- The Keystone in the Arch -- War of Shadows -- Sandstorm -- Half-Shared Secrets -- The Lady Who Spied on Spies -- The Oracles Speak Gibberish -- The Woman of Daunting Intelligence -- Mare Incognitum -- Spies, Everywhere -- Compromised -- Inside Information -- El Alamein -- Unknown Soldiers.

"As World War II raged in North Africa, General Irwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war"-- Provided by publisher.