Jason Bell Shares Operation Sparrow
Featured Book
Operation Sparrow
The extraordinary true WWII story of three American commandos who parachuted behind enemy lines with orders to get captured—and convince the Nazis that D-Day was coming a thousand miles away. March 16, 1944. Colonel Duke jumped into Hitler's Europe to lead Operation Sparrow, an OSS mission authorized by the president. Duke was forty-eight, twice the age of most paratroopers. He had played pro football for the New York Giants, flown fighter planes, and made his fortune in advertising before World War II made him a spy behind enemy lines. Within days, the three Sparrows were captured in Hungary. It wasn't a failure. It was the plan. Under brutal Gestapo interrogation, Duke and his men set out to convince the Third Reich that the D-Day invasion would strike the Balkans, far from France. Survive torture while making a lie sound true—it was either genius or suicidal. Probably both. If the ruse held, Axis divisions would defend the wrong coast. If it broke, three Americans would be shot as spies—and the Wehrmacht would be poised to win D-Day. Of the tens of millions who fought in the war, the Sparrows were the only ones whose mission required capture by the Nazis. Drawing on recently declassified OSS files, Jason Bell brings their story to life. Operation Sparrow reveals: The American heroes who turned their own capture into a weapon The Gestapo interrogation rooms that became a secret Allied battlefield The top-secret deception that kept Hitler's divisions away from Normandy Meticulously researched and told at the pace of a thriller, Operation Sparrow is narrative history for readers of Operation Mincemeat and Unbroken.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
Join us for a special Saturday afternoon event on October 3rd! Jason Bell will be visiting from the University of New Brunswick to share his new book, Operation Sparrow: The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War. Local author Nicholas Reynolds will join Jason in conversation. His new book, Ortiz's War: The Allies' Secret Weapon Against the Nazis in France, was released in August.
Featured Authors
Jason Bell
Jason Bell, PhD, is an American academic who received his doctorate from Vanderbilt University. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in Germany, and has taught at several universities in the United States, and in Belgium and Canada. He was the first scholar granted exclusive access to Winthrop Bell’s classified espionage papers (the subject of Cracking the Nazi Code). He is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick.
Nicholas Reynolds
Nicholas Reynolds has worked in the field of modern history off and on for 40 years, with some unusual detours. Freshly minted PhD from Oxford University in hand, he joined the Marine Corps in the 1970s, serving as an infantry officer and then as an official historian. As a colonel in the Reserves, he was Officer in Charge of Field History, deploying historians around the world to capture history as it was being made. For many years, he worked at CIA, most recently as the historian for the CIA Museum, where he drafted the strategic plan for the next decade and wrote a foundational monograph as well as shorter pieces and many labels. He still believes he has held the best two niche jobs in the US Government. Leveraging his experience, he has taught at the Naval War College, Johns Hopkins University, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
About the Venue
Fonts Books & Gifts
McLean’s independent neighborhood bookstore, carrying new books for all ages. Fonts Books offers a curated selection of new books for all ages, as well as greeting cards, stickers, journaling supplies, candles and chocolates.
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