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

At the start of World War II, the United States established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the CIA, to meet urgent intelligence needs. To staff the new agency, the OSS recruited academics—literature professors, librarians, and historians—and trained them in undercover operations and investigative work. These scholars would significantly influence both the war's outcome and American cultural institutions after returning home. Book and Dagger tells the story of a connected group of humanities scholars turned spies, drawing on personal histories, letters, and declassified OSS files. The book features Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who identified and turned German spies into double agents; Sherman Kent, a history professor who became head of analysis for Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents. These individuals helped establish the foundations of modern intelligence work and transformed American higher education upon their return. The narrative covers how academics entered espionage, the true stories of operatives revealed through newly released OSS files, the Research and Analysis branch that served as the OSS's intellectual center, and how this group of scholars laid the groundwork for the modern CIA.