Title:
The catcher was a spy : the mysterious life of Moe Berg / Nicholas Dawidoff.
ISBN:
9780679762898
Personal Author:
Edition:
First Vintage edition.
Publication Information:
New York : Vintage Books, 1995.
Physical Description:
viii, 453 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 21 cm
General Note:
Originally published: New York : Pantheon Books, 1994.
Contents:
Prologue: Who was Moe Berg? -- The public Berg: Professor Moe -- Youth: runt Wolfe -- The stiff collar -- Robin in Paris -- Good field, no hit -- You never knew he was around -- Strange foreigner with camera -- Mr. Berg, you've been brilliant -- Southern junket -- Remus heads for Rome -- A perfect spy -- Always good company -- A life without calendar -- The secret life of Moe Berg.
Summary:
"Moe Berg is the only major-league baseball player whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA. For Berg was much more than a third-string catcher who played on several major league teams between 1923 and 1939. Educated at Princeton and the Sorbonne, he was reputed to speak a dozen languages (although it was also said he couldn't hit in any of them) and went on to become an OSS spy in Europe during World War II. As Nicholas Dawidoff follows Berg from his claustrophobic childhood through his glamorous (though equivocal) careers in sports and espionage and into the long, nomadic years during which he lived on the hospitality of such scattered acquaintances as Joe DiMaggio and Albert Einstein, he succeeds not only in establishing where Berg went, but who he was beneath his layers of carefully constructed cover. As engrossing as a novel by John le Carré, The Catcher Was a Spy is a triumphant work of historical and psychological detection."--Dust jacket.
Personal Subject:
Genre:
OCLC Number:
ocm32686577
Availability:
Eagan - Wescott~1
