Book and Dagger by Elyse Graham
Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The book tells about how intellectuals, largely professors in the humanities, but librarians and other bookish types contributed to the intelligence success of the Allies during WWII. There are many exciting or fascinating stories, such as the raid on the Telemark heavy water plant in Norway and Operation Mincemeat. For someone new to the subject the book will be a treat. Unfortunately, this is well-trodden ground and there is very little I haven’t heard or read about often many times in books, movies and TV. I only read this because it was a selection by my book club. While I enjoyed the book in places, it felt like a slog at times since I knew so much of it. I realized the author was trying to put a new slant on it by focusing on the egghead angle, and I’m glad to see them get their due, but I think she was pushing it a little too far. There were places where she said, perhaps rightly, perhaps not, that such and such a triumph was due to the intelligence work of these scholars. In a sense it might be true since every step by every single participant was probably necessary to reach success, that a bit like saying the tailor who made Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves beat Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manilla because he couldn’t have won without those gloves. For us jaded intel types, there’s not much new here.
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