Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham, 400 pgs. 

       For being dense subject matter, this was a really fun read that basically covers the beginnings of the CIA. At the beginning of World War II, America wanted to get into the spy game but had no history prior to draw from. As a result, the government leaned heavily on academic institutions--professors, archivists, and experts--to help them develop a knowledge-base about the world and its potential enemies. Some became spies, some set-up clandestine divisions overseas, some joined the newly developed Research and Analysis division (at a certain point, they were known as the 'Chairborne Division'). R&A laid the groundwork for the techniques and protocols that America would gather intelligence in the decades to come. The way the book starts is similar to the way a traditional spy novel begins--with a mild-mannered hero, being approached by a government spook and being asked to meet in a secret, shadowy place. The author does great research highlighting some of the most important names to have a hand in major operations against the Nazis. Adele Kibre is one of the only female heroes that stands out. She was a PHD archivist with a talent for finding rare books and was sent over to Europe to hunt down useful texts that would help the Allies fight the Germans. I was additionally surprised to learn the amount of planning that happened prior to the Normandy invasion, all conducted by the R&A team and followed by a "ghost war ," which was the Allies' attempt to make Hitler think that the invasion was going to happen elsewhere in Europe. It's a great book that reminds you why we, as a society, rely on experts and scholars (and librarians!) to make the world a better place. 

The Turtle House

The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill, 296 pages

In 1999 Texas, architect Lia Cope has hit a wall with her career and moved back home, where she shares a room with her grandmother, Mineko. Mineko recently moved in with her son and daughter-in-law after her house burned down. The forced proximity of Lia and Mineko has led to bonding, as Lia records Mineko's stories from her youth in Japan through her immigration to the United States. But when Mineko is forced to live in a senior living facility, the pair plots a course to recreate the titular Turtle House, a long-lost beloved place for Mineko.

While the stories of Mineko's life in Japan, and as a WWII Japanese bride for an American soldier, are fascinating and engrossing, the more modern elements, particularly Lia's tale of college and the run-up to her return home, falls a little flat in comparison. I kind of wish it had simply been a historical fiction story of Mineko without Lia's involvement. Oh well.

Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich

Hitler’s People by Richard J. Evans (2024) 598 pp
 Evans wrote a three-volume history of Hitler’s rise, reign and fall and in this new book he profiles a selection of the main villains associated with the Third Reich, providing biography and commentary on 20 Germans tangentially involved. A lot here is well-trod ground with the ruthless pre-war Hitler shown as a diminished figure after 1939 as the war progresses and he fades from public view (although his deleterious impact is omnipresent). Evans groups the individuals by their relation to Hitler and to the Third Reich. In addition to the Leader (Hitler) subjects are categorized into groups -- enabling Paladins, evil Enforcers and witting and unwitting Instruments. Evans’ depth of knowledge shines in the vivid and insightful commentary at the beginning of these sections. A few common denominators are the resentment of the German loss in World War I, the appeal of a strong leader, reaction to the dismal economics of the Great depression and antisemitism. Evans does not dwell on current affairs, but the parallels are obvious. This is a sobering read – few of the people included show contrition.

The Echo of Old Books

The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis 433 pp.

Ashlyn Greer owns a rare book shop and has the ability to sense the previous owners of books. When she receives some boxes of books from a local estate she finds two beautifully bound volumes that apparently were not published. The books are the story of a doomed romance during the days leading up to WWII. Belle is the younger daughter of a wealthy family who is in an arranged engagement to a wealthy young man whose father wants to do business with her father. Belle's father is an evil man who is part of the America First Committee, an anti-Semitic, pro-fascist, isolationist organization. At the engagement party Belle meets Hemi, a British journalist, and they soon begin a clandestine affair. The two books are written by each of them, giving their own side of what went wrong. Ashlyn contacts the man who brought the books to her store and together they search for the real identities of Belle and Hemi in his family. The story is well written but I was hoping to see more of Ashlyn's telemetry skills used in the story.

The Wealth of Shadows

The Wealth of Shadows by Graham Moore, 366 pages

In the days leading up to World War II, there were definitely politicians around the globe that had an inkling that Hitler was planning to invade most of Europe. But the people who had the best idea? The economists. The Wealth of Shadows details a group of real life economists, tax attorneys, and U.S. Treasury Department leaders who created a secret organization to try to stymie the Nazi war machine without officially breaking the U.S. neutrality agreements. The creativity of these plans, the hard work on creating legal loopholes, and the forward-thinking planning is incredible, and I'm glad Moore was able to shed some light on this previously unknown element of World War II. Who knew that economics could form such a captivating basis for historical fiction??

The Lost Book of Bonn

The Lost Book of Bonn by Brianna Labuskes, 384 pages

In 1946, war widow Emmy is in Frankfurt working on a project to return books that had been confiscated by Nazis to their rightful owners (and barring that, find a place to preserve them in the Library of Congress) when she discovers a volume of Rilke's poetry with an inscription that immediately draws her in: "To Annelise, my Edelweiss Pirate." 

In 1938, 18-year-old Annelise is part of the Edelwess Pirates, an outdoorsy group that has morphed into an organized resistance to the growing powers of the Nazis, when she falls in love with Eitan, a Jewish factory worker in her hometown of Bonn. But their love, and Eitan's safety, is in jeopardy thanks to Annelise's sister, who is a rule-following, uniformed member of the League of German Girls (the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth for boys).

In 1943, the aforementioned sister, Christina, has a cushy job in the Nazi intelligence-gathering department in Berlin when she learns that, despite being married to a gentile, Eitan has been captured and is headed for a concentration camp, unless she intervenes.

The stories of these three women interweave throughout the book, unfolding a story of resistance and self-awareness. It's rare to find a book that features German resistance to the Nazis on an organized scale — usually it's just one person or family or neighborhood, or the organized resistance is from the Allied Forces — and it was so refreshing to see a new take on what's become an oversaturated era in historical fiction, doubly so because the story is so well told. I absolutely loved this one, and will be recommending it widely.

*This book will be published March 19.

The Devil's Advocate

The Devil's Advocate by Morris L. West (1959) 351 pages

Blaise Meredith is an English priest based in Rome, who has been diagnosed with cancer. In the limited time he has left, he is given the task to investigate a request to declare a man named Giacomo Nerone to be a saint. Nerone's past has many gaps in it, which makes it harder to investigate, and some of the activities that are not in question include the fact that he lived with a woman he didn't marry and they had a child together before Nerone was killed by Communist partisans.

Blaise Meredith, a somber man, accepts the task to be the Devil's Advocate, which involves digging through the evidence and subjecting it to the severest scrutiny. We learn that there is also a Postulator who builds the case for sainthood. Meredith travels to the poor town in southern Italy where Nerone lived the last year or so of his life, and he meets with the local priest (who has his own ethical lapses), the local doctor (who is a Jew who has never been fully accepted by the community), a rich Countess (who seems quite unhappy), as well as with the woman who had a child (who is now an adolescent) with Nerone. Time is ticking away: Meredith's symptoms worsen, but he experiences some of the greatest friendship in his life during this process.

I found this to be a compelling drama with many distinct personalities and intrigues, along with narrations of how the Fascists, as well as bands of Communists, affected the lives of these very poor people during the war.

Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade, A Duty Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1969) 215 pages

I read this long ago, but needed a refresher. It's clear that many of the events that Vonnegut experienced in World War 2 were incorporated into this novel, especially when he and other American soldiers were captured by the Germans and shipped to Dresden to be used as labor in the beautiful, culturally significant city that was said to have no military value. Despite that, after a month, the Americans and English firebombed the city, killing 135,000 people and turning the city into an ashy moon-like wreck. The American prisoners of war survived only because they were based in an underground meat locker of a slaughterhouse, Slaughterhouse Five, to be exact.

The story revolves around a man named Billy Pilgrim, who, like Vonnegut, also fought in the war and experienced this horrific event. What's different about Billy is that long after the war, Billy says he was kidnapped by an alien people called Tralfamadorians, and taken to live in a zoo-like enclosure on their planet. This is when Billy becomes unstuck in time. When he isn't on Tralfamadore, he lives in Ilium, New York, as an optometrist, married to the daughter of the optometry's school's president. Lots of snippets of Billy's life unfold in a non-linear manner, indicative of the time travel he experiences, visiting and re-visiting times in both the past and future. He learns that the Tralfamadorians don't understand humans' concern with death. They think that that there are some bad moments, but there are a lot of other moments that are not bad. All moments have always existed, and there's nothing that can be done to change them. Billy is told that of all the inhabited planets Tralfamadorians have studied, only Earthlings believe in free will.

Terrible story about coping with war, told in an entertainingly wry way...

 

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy

 

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis (2022) 496 pages

The title sounded fascinating and there is a local St. Louis angle, since Josephine Baker was born here. Before I worked here at the library I attended a virtual author talk organized by one of the area book stores, which further heightened my interest. Mr. Lewis shared that there is a film adaptation in the works with Janelle Monae expressing interest in playing Josephine Baker. I really hope this project is greenlit and completed.

The author explains in his introduction that British espionage files are kept classified with no set time period when they will be released to the public, so there are gaps in the details he can present in the history here. There are two male secret agents who worked with Josephine either from afar or in person, who are described as inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond. One of those, Jacques Abtey, a French Resistance agent, had a very close relationship with Josephine. A major source used by Lewis is a memoir written by Abtey, so this spy who used multiple aliases throughout his career sometimes seems to take center stage at the expense of showing Josephine's accomplishments. Josephine spends over a year, in the year before America entered WWII, dealing with abdominal infections in a Casablanca clinic. This period is covered through multiple chapters. Josephine's clinic room becomes a meeting place for the sharing of intelligence between Free French, British, American, and North African Arabic and Berber agents, a place that the Axis agents don't dare attack or bug. Her room becomes the important thing, but she is sick and unable to actively engage in gathering intelligence. This is just to indicate that large portions of the story put her in a passive role. She didn't share details of her war years later in her life, so the author is forced to leave out many specifics. Still there are gems of facts that really capture the imagination. She used her singing and dancing performances as cover for moving intelligence for the Allied powers, or she used a Red Cross nurse position in the Free French military to do the same. She also was a trained pilot and as a superstar was able to move amongst powerful people in Europe and North Africa. She showed a deep conviction for fighting against Nazi hate and American segregation.

Grunts: Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II to Iraq

Grunts: Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II to Iraq by John C. McManus  518 pp.

Military history is not generally one of my go-to topics when reading non-fiction, except in the case of books written by this author. I first learned of him when my son was in a military history class taught by Dr. McManus, the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of U.S. Military History at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). This book, like his others are very readable and understandable by anyone regardless of previous knowledge of the wars contained in it. Through interviews with the soldiers who lived through extreme battles, McManus details conflicts in the forests and jungles as well as the streets of villages and cities where infantrymen do the legwork and hand-to-hand fighting. The modern idea of "push-button" wars, begun during the Persian Gulf War, where the battles are fought just with technology rather than men on the ground is exaggerated. While hesitating to call reading this book as enjoyable, it is engaging on a number of levels.

Blackbird Girls

 

Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman 340 pp.

This story takes place in Ukraine during both World War II and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Told from the point of view of three girls, Rifka in 1941 and Valentina and Oksana in 1986. Rifka and her brother are sent on the run by their family in hopes they can avoid capture by the Nazis. Valentina and Oksana, classmates who have always been at odds, end up traveling alone to stay with Valentina's grandmother Rita in Leningrad while their parents suffer the effects of the nuclear disaster. This well-written story covers multiple challenges faced by all the girls before finally revealing the connection between the two generations of tragedy. I wonder if the author is planning a sequel that will include the current war in Ukraine. 

The Forest of Vanishing Stars

The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel, 384 pages

During World War II, thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe escaped the horrors of the ghettos and concentration camps by hiding in the dense forests of their homelands. The Forest of Vanishing Stars sheds a light on that harrowing experience by focusing on a girl named Yona, who was raised in the forest by the old woman that kidnapped her as a toddler. After the old woman's death, Yona breaks away from the solitary life when she discovers small groups of escaped Jews struggling to survive. Over the course of the war, she helps them stay healthy and avoid Nazi patrols, foraging for food and stealing necessities from neighboring villages.

Told in a way that skirts the line between folktale and historical fiction, this is a compelling and beautifully told story of World War II, and one that is rarely highlighted. Well worth a read.

*This book will be published July 8, 2021.

The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot (the final Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery) by Colin Cotterill 288 pp.

Kara brought me an ARC of this book a bit ago. I kept putting off reading it because it is the last Dr. Siri mystery and I was afraid of how it would end, after all the dear doctor is an elderly gentleman. No spoilers but Dr. Siri receives a mysterious diary from an unknown sender. It was apparently written by a kamikaze pilot during the World War II Japanese occupation of Laos. Siri is intrigued by the diary, half in Japanese which he cannot read, and half in Lao. He and his wife, Madame Daeng, coerce a U.N, worker into taking them along to southern Laos to solve the mystery and find a Japanese translator. In the meantime their friend Inspector Phosy finds himself held hostage while on a police mission. Without giving things away, Madame Daeng's use of her old spy/commando skills come into play in a side plot involving the U.N. worker. And of course, Dr. Siri''s contact with the spirit world gives clues to a possible ending. To be honest, this is not my favorite book in the series. It seems to be lacking some of the humor of the previous novels but it is the last.

The Splendid and the Vile

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill and the Blitz by Erik Larson  608 pp.

This is the newest book by Larson which I was rushing to finish before the author's appearance last Friday, which was cancelled due to the current virus concerns. As always, Larson did a meticulous job of researching his material. All the quotes come from written sources. The book covers the period of 1940-1941 when Great Britain was going through the worst of the Blitz as Hitler tried to force the country to surrender to the Reich. While Churchill was dealing with the nightly bombings of London and surrounding areas, he was also trying to negotiate aid from the United States which was an uphill battle against the isolationist Congress. The large "cast of characters" includes Churchill's wife and children, members of the British Cabinet, American visitors Harry Hopkins, Averill Harriman, and others. Larson is a master of making non-fiction read like fiction and this book is no exception. He brings this important period in history to life.

The Muralist

The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro 352 pp.

This captivating tale alternates between the early days of World War II and the present. Alizée Benoit is an artist working in the WPA mural project. Among her co-artists are those who would later be famous like her lover Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollack, and Lee Krasner who all would further the Abstract Expressionist movement. Alizée is also dealing with trying to get members of her Jewish family out of Europe before they fall victims to Hitler's regime. She finds an artistic patron and political ally in Eleanor Roosevelt who Alizée hopes can help her. In contemporary time, Alizée's niece, Danielle, is working at Christie's auction house when she discovers fragments of a painting attached to the back of paintings by the Abstract Expressionists and investigates the possibility that they were done by the aunt who had disappeared from New York in the early 1940s. Her investigation leads her to museums, archives, and eventually to Europe to find the startling answer to the mystery of  Alizée. I had trouble getting into this story at first and it took a few chapters to capture my interest. I'm glad I didn't give up on it.

The Midnight Zoo

The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett  217 pp.

This is one of the selections for the Treehouse Book Club. It's the story of three Romany Children who escape after the Nazis attack their caravan and they witness the killing of a family member and the arrest of the others from a hiding place in the woods. Andrej and his younger brother, Tomas take their infant sister and scavenge ruined villages for food and items to sell to get milk for the baby. They ultimately arrive at a small zoo, abandoned except for its animals, a lioness, a monkey, a chamois, a wolf, a boar, a seal, an eagle, a bear, a llama, and a kangaroo. During the children's one night with the animals, the animals share their stories with the children. In the end, the children escape with the animals, or do they? This book is a look at the futility and cruelty of war through a lens of magical realism.

The Twilight Man

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi  176 pp.

This is a biographical graphic novel about the life of Rod Serling from his days as a paratrooper in World War II to his creation of iconic television from the early days of the medium. Serling was the consummate workaholic from his teenage years. He pushed himself and his superiors to get into the paratroopers even though at 5"4" he did not make the height requirement. In the early days of television he frequently butted heads with his superiors over censorship and commercialism. The creation of his popular "Twilight Zone" program was a way to get around restrictions against stories about race and discrimination by setting the stories in the future with alien societies. His work ethic, writing several scripts at the same time while smoking up to four packs a day ultimately killed him at age 50. Shadmi has done an excellent job of portraying Serling's intensity and frustrations as well as his enjoyment of the good life after his successes.

Armageddon in Retrospect

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut  234 pp.

This collection of previously unpublished works was released in 2008, one year after the author's death. The introduction is by his son, Mark and the text of a speech Vonnegut was scheduled to make at Butler University which Mark gave in his place - Vonnegut died a couple weeks before. The remainder of the book is anecdotes and short stories about war, based on Vonnegut's World War II experiences. Much of the writing is grim laced with Vonnegut's quirky humor. As a long term (40+ years) Vonnegut fan, I think this is a marvelous book. I listened to the audiobook which was a less than stellar narration by actor Rip Torn.

The War that Saved My Life

The War that Saved My Life by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley  316 pp.

This was a re-read in preparation for the next Treehouse Book Club. My original blog about it is here. It's the story of a girl born with a club foot who lives with an abusive mother who keeps her hidden away. When her little brother is to be sent away because of the threat of London getting bombed by the Nazis, Ada runs (crawls) away with him. They end up in the care of a young woman who is bullied into taking them in but soon comes to love them and makes plans to get Ada's foot surgically repaired only to be thwarted by the children's mother. There is a sequel titled The War I Finally Won but I have yet to read it.

An Elephant in the Garden

An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo  199 pp.

This is the first book for the new season of my Treehouse Book Club. It's the story of a family of refugees and their companion, a Canadian airman, from the bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II. What makes this story a bit different is the presence of a friendly elephant, once a resident of the Dresden Zoo, who travels with the family. The mother, a zoo employee, rescues the elephant from certain death when the animals were slotted for death to prevent their escape if the city was bombed. The story is told by the oldest daughter who, as an old woman, becomes a patient in a nursing home. Keeping the secret of the airman's identity while he aids the family in their escape adds tension to the story. Morpurgo, author of War Horse, created this novel after hearing a true story about a zookeeper in Northern Ireland who saved an elephant from the zoo during WWII.