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Before the films -- before Sean Connery first uttered the line "shaken, not stirred" -- there was Ian Fleming's James Bond. Beginning with Casino Royale in 1953, Fleming (who also penned Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) published 14 books featuring the character code-named 007.

As Ben Macintyre, a columnist for London's The Times, tells us in For Your Eyes Only, Bond's jet-setting travels (the Bahamas, the Alps) and expensive tastes (the Savile Row suits, the Aston Martins) along with his ability to surmount any obstacle made him deeply appealing to post-war Great Britain. What better way to cope with lengthy queues for rations than to escape into the adventures of this man of action? Bond was a symbol of luxury and adventure in a time of deprivation and struggle. He was a perfect fit for Playboy as well: The magazine published Fleming's short stories For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy in the 1960s.

And then there were the Bond Girls. Provocative, pretty and promiscuous, characters like Mary Goodnight and Pussy Galore were male fantasies on the page. Without them, audiences around the world would have been denied the opportunity to study the courageous acting choices made by Bond Girls like Ursula Andress and Barbara Bach.

Fleming, a former British intelligence officer and later a globetrotting journalist, drew on personal experience to create the Bond universe. Like Bond, Fleming drank like a fish. Like Bond, he was a ladies' man. Who was the real-life model for Bond? How do Bond's high-tech spy gadgets compare to those Fleming worked with during the war? This book, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth, has the answers.