Pages Through History

About this event

This month we're discussing Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham. Tasked by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with building an espionage agency from scratch, William Donovan began filling the new Office of Strategic Services with “mild-mannered professors and oddball archivists”--in other words, “library rats.” Elyse Graham tells a story that unfolded in Washington DC, in “neutral” cities like Stockholm and Istanbul, and within Nazi-occupied Europe. It is a story of decidedly analog intelligence-gathering and analysis that would end up remaking spy craft. Find Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II in the library catalog.