The Bastard Brigade

"So you two are the other GLG-20s..." This incredible book weaves together several fascinating threads involving an eccentric cast of characters, including a polyglot professional baseball player, bumbling egghead physicists, a wily white Russian, communist sympathizers, and the Kennedy clan, on their quests to neutralize Nazi super weapons, the supreme of which is a suspected atomic bomb. Through intrigue, sabotage, daring missions, sacrifice, and dumb luck, we see how this small group of misfits helped stymie the German atomic program. Along the way Kean gives a crash course in nuclear physics, introducing us to the various discoverers of radioactivity, neutrons, and fission. The outlandish and often comical nature of the story, including characters that probably shouldn't have been sneaking around behind enemy lines, indeed seems primed for a cinematic treatment, a WWII version of Spies Like Us.

I heard an interview with the author on NPR and was riveted. I got it from the library and set about devouring it. There's a lot of interesting background, particularly about radioactive fission, it's history, and the role of Marie Curie's daughter and her husband in further research. There's also some material on Joseph Kennedy (JFK's older brother), a polyglot baseball player, Moe Berg, and the German physicist, Werner Heisenberg.

That said, the author is not able to hold the entire construct together as a compelling story and parts of it feel stitched together. He also writes in a style that tries to be hip but is so anachronistic (given that this takes places in the 1930s-1940s), it ends up being off-putting.