Agent Josephine
American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy
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4.3 • 36 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022
Vanity Fair, Best Books of 2022
Booklist, Best Books of 2022
Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France.
Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy.
In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers—a cover for her spying work—Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served—the US, France, and Britain.
Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After fleeing the poverty and racism of St. Louis, Mo., to seek fame and fortune in Europe, Josephine Baker (1906–1975) gave "the greatest performance of her life" as a WWII spy, according to this scintillating biography. Historian Lewis (Churchill's Band of Brothers) draws on newly discovered letters and diaries to paint a vivid portrait of Baker as "a chameleon, a rebel, a warrior, and a rule-breaker at heart." Recruited by French intelligence officials in 1939, Baker's first assignment was to befriend an attaché at the Italian embassy in Paris and find out if Mussolini planned to form an alliance with Hitler. She also helped determine Japan's wartime intentions, identified Abwehr agents in Paris, and ferried classified intelligence—written in invisible ink on musical scores—across enemy lines. In addition to her espionage work, Baker flew aid missions to refugees and entertained U.S. troops and dignitaries at the Liberty Club in Casablanca. Lewis stuffs the narrative with intriguing digressions about wartime intelligence activities, including a U.S. plan to help the Mafia smuggle cigarettes into Morocco in exchange for intelligence, and vividly evokes the "intense and tumultuous affair" between Baker and her chief handler, Jacques Abtey. The result is a thrilling espionage story perfect for fans of Lynne Olson's Madame Fourcade's Secret War.
