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One of the most important books of our time. Considering what the United States is currently going through. The same ideological and loyalty purges - the same thing that Germany went through. Germany, lost a World War, an atomic bomb, and being the preeminent scientific country in the world for those two things. There is more that also caused them to the lose the war but it's the racial purity, the dismissal of women, and general shortsightedness that actually lost them those people that made them diverse and strong.

History repeats itself and this book answers the question, what use is a humanities degree? Considering that our CIA was not built from scientists or politicians but by those people (women, Black, Jewish) who were scholars and librarians in the very field that is so often derided today. This book tells the story that Art History is so much more than it seems and that the best spies are not the rugged good looking military commanders but are the bookworms, and librarians.

James Bond would have been a better spy if he was not a Commander in the Royal Navy but maybe if he was a Cambridge graduate who excelled in the Classics.