Audiobook11 hours
Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe
Written by Kathy Peiss
Narrated by Suzanne Toren
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause. Galvanized by the events of war into acquiring and preserving the written word, as well as providing critical information for intelligence purposes, these American civilians set off on missions to gather foreign publications and information across Europe. They journeyed to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was to document, exploit, preserve, and restitute these works, and even, in the case of Nazi literature, to destroy them. In this fascinating account, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front. These collecting missions also boosted the postwar ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for them to become great international repositories of scientific reports, literature, and historical sources. Not only did their wartime work have lasting implications for academic institutions, foreign-policy making, and national security, it also led to the development of today's essential information science tools. Illuminating the growing global power of the United States in the realms of intelligence and cultural heritage, Peiss tells the story of the men and women who went to Europe to collect and protect books and information and in doing so enriches the debates over the use of data in times of both war and peace.
Related to Information Hunters
Related audiobooks
Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hitler's Children: Sons and Daughters of Third Reich Leaders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crimes That Changed Our World: Tragedy, Outrage, and Reform Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Setup: A True Story of Dirty Cops, Soccer Moms, and Reality TV Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Executing the Rosenbergs: Death and Diplomacy in a Cold War World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Officer's Daughter: A Memoir of Family and Forgiveness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCode Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Homicide Special: A Year in the Life of the LAPD's Elite Detective Unit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recounting the Anthrax Attacks: Terror, the Amerithrax Task Force, and the Evolution of Forensics in the FBI Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Goodnight: A World War II Story of Espionage, Adventure, and Betrayal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5True Story tie-in edtion: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder, Madness and Mayhem: Twenty-Five Tales of True Crime and Dark History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman on the Windowsill: A Tale of Mystery in Several Parts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Wars & Military For You
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diary of Anne Frank Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When I Come Home Again: 'A page-turning literary gem' THE TIMES, BEST BOOKS OF 2020 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rape of Nanking: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kill Anything That Moves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Strategy Masters: The Prince, The Art of War, and The Gallic Wars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin - Book Summary: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead And Win Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Founding Mothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saved: A War Reporter's Mission to Make It Home Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Information Hunters
Rating: 3.8666666666666667 out of 5 stars
4/5
15 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book tells a story that has not been told before. It tells the story of the many people who saved the documents, books and pictures produced by the Nazis in WWII. As the author tells us in the Prologue “This book grew our of a chance discovery of an online memorial to an uncle I never knew. Reuben Peiss had been a librarian at Harvard when World War II began … and he was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, the nation’s first intelligence agency.” This reviewer came across the book while doing research on an old professor of mine, Douwe Stuurman. Stuurman is one of the soldiers who contributed to the finding and saving of truckloads of books, documents, pictures, and writings of the time.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded together inWorld WarII Europe. Kathy Peiss. 2020. I was unaware that librarians were part of the effort to gather books and documents published in Europe during WWII. Librarians, archivists and scholars worked with military and intelligence personnel during the war and after the war to help the government. They were the Monuments Men of books! They followed the army into Germany and gathered Nazi documents and also took books from stores and schools. Like the Monuments Men they discovered looted materials hidden in caves and castles and basements. They worked to preserve and these items and get them to the rightful owners. Mistakes were made. Many of the items ended up in the Library of Congress and American academic libraries and some in private hands. Attempts have been made and are still being made to right some of these wrongs. This is a fascinating book, but it is an academic work, and tedious to read at times
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A history focused on the work of American librarians and information professionals who worked to collect materials during the war years for intelligence purposes as well as working to preserve and restitute materials that were hidden during the war.It's a bit hard to review this one as I'm fully aware that I was not in the best head space for focusing on the text when I read it. I will admit to being disappointed that the book was so US-focused as there were occasional references to work being done by the British and Russians in the same field and I would have been curious to see how their work compared. The introduction also notes that the author's uncle was one of the lead officers who did work for the Library of Congress in Europe during the war years collecting material. These sections were the most interesting and other passages with a long litany of acronyms and names working on similar projects didn't hold the same spark. Interesting reading but note that this one requires a good ability to focus when diving in.