Book and Dagger

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

The story of the US intelligence agencies, as they started in WW2. At the beginning of the war the US had no military intelligence people. What little had been in place after WW1 was dismantled in the 1920s, so FDR was starting from scratch. Interestingly, the people who put together the 1940 intelligence system chose to focus on people from the humanities. This first version was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which after the war became the CIA. The strategy for recruiting academics and librarians to form the first intelligence service was that they wanted people who were used to and familiar with spending hours doing research in libraries and archives. These were not James Bond type spies, these were people spend hours going over newspapers, phone books, railroad time tables and scientific journals, gleaning information that was useful and that was in plain site. Also, being academics helped provide a cover, they were setup as book buyers in Istanbul and Stockholm, which gave them access to people and material that they could use to compile their reports. Also, since they were secretly working for the government, they had a pretty limitless budget to purchase books and other materials.

A fascinating story of the evolution of the intelligence world.

Skies of Thunder

Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World Hardcover by Caroline Alexander

The story of Berma in WW2. The amazing efforts to supply China with material, lend lease, during WW2. Astounding efforts were made with primitive airplanes to fly over the 'hump', basically the Himalayas. At the same time the Berma road was being constructed, through a dense jungle and over tough terrain. The numbers of lives lost, and the corruption of the Chinese that allowed much of the material to end up in the hands of the Japanese is heart breaking. While the effort was astounding, the author cannot really justify the human and monetary costs.

Neptune's Fortune

Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire by Julian Sancton

This book chronicles a shipwreck of a Spanish treasure galleon that was taking treasure from south America to Spain when it was pursued and sunk by a contingent of British ships. What was different about this ship sinking is that it sunk fairly intact, unlike other ships that sunk at this time was that they other ships were sunk mostly by storms, and their cargo was spread over a large area. The fact that this sunk intact meant that they treasure sure be in one place. This was a well known treasure ship for many years, but the general knowledge was that it was in a location where it was not.

The author also spends a lot of time putting the ship in context by providing a history of Spanish colonialism in central and south America. The ship was found within the legal waters of Colombia, but when it was found Spain tried to assert that it was their ship so their treasure. However, the fact that there is no longer a Spanish empire took precedent over Spain's claim. The author also goes into the history of treasure hunters and the international laws that govern this kind of treasure.