A little-known chapter of World War II history with an intriguing American intelligence agent in the leading role.
Fast-paced account of an American woman working with military intelligence who was captured by the Nazis.
Washington Post national security editor Finn (co-author: The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, 2014) follows the story of a rich and adventurous American woman who joined the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, after Pearl Harbor. Born to a wealthy family, Gertrude “Gertie” Legendre (1902-2000) was more interested in outdoor life than socializing, and she became a world-traveling big-game hunter who collected specimens for top museums. But when her husband, Sidney, joined the war effort, she took a job with the OSS, first in Washington, D.C., and then in London. After the liberation of Paris, she found her way to the city and then to the front. However, Allied troops had fallen back from where she thought they were, and she and her companions found themselves under enemy fire and were forced to surrender. She was the first American woman in uniform to be captured by the Germans. From the start, Gertie was suspected of being a spy, kept under close guard, and faced with hard questioning, though never with torture. Finn chronicles her ordeal as she was moved around Germany based on original documents, including Gertie’s own letters and diaries as well as official OSS archives. The result is a fascinating look at the treatment of POWs during the final year of the war—e.g., the hotel reserved for important French hostages where Gertie spent her last few weeks in captivity or the general availability of wine for upper-class prisoners even when there was not enough clean water for washing. The author provides added interest with his profiles of several other figures of historical note, including war photographer Margaret Bourke-White and OSS chief “Wild Bill” Donovan. Finn combines solid research and good storytelling skills to bring Gertie and her era to life for contemporary readers.
A little-known chapter of World War II history with an intriguing American intelligence agent in the leading role.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4733-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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