Cloak & Gown; Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961

New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1987. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 607, [1] pages. Illustrations Notes. Bibliography. Index. DJ has some wear, soiling, and small tear and chip at back. Robin W. Winks (December 5, 1930 - April 7, 2003) was an American academic, historian, diplomat, and writer. After joining the faculty of Yale University in 1957, he rose in 1996-1999 to become the Randolph Townsend Professor of History and Master of Berkeley College. At Oxford University he served as George Eastman Professor in 1992-3, and as Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History in 1999-2000. He earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1957 with a dissertation on Canadian and American relations. He was on leave 1969-71 to serve as U.S. Cultural Attache to the American Embassy in London, and was a regular adviser to various governmental agencies. Winks was a Fellow of the Explorers Club, the Society of American Historians, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Commonwealth Society, and a member of both the Athenaeum Club and Special Forces Club. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Smith-Mundt Fellow, a Stimson Grant winner. In 1989 he won the Donner Medal from the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States. Winks held offices and committee chairmanships in the American Historical Association, the Canadian Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians et al. He was honored with a Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nebraska and from the University of Colorado. Derived from a Kirkus review: An extensively annotated and consistently fascinating report on many of the Ivy Leaguers who have served their country in clandestine capacities. Winks focuses on Yale faculty members and graduates who worked for the OSS or CIA during a period that runs roughly from the start of WW II through 1961. The author largely limits his coverage to intelligence activities in the European theater and on the home front. Winks interviewed over 200 Former agents and gained access to a wealth of recently declassified files and has compiled a record remarkable for both interpretive commentary and a grand collection of spy stories. His cast of characters features the engaging likes of Norman Holmes Pearson, a distinguished Hawthorne scholar who headed the OSS's counterintelligence unit in wartime London and subsequently played a key role in the publication of Sir John Masterman's The Double-Cross System. Winks also provides as full an account as is probably possible of James Jesus Angleton's shadowy career. Included as well are vivid rundowns on the contributions made by field operatives like Donald Downes (an expert at, among other enterprises, burgling his way into neutral nations' embassies) and desk-bound polymaths who conducted analytic research on subjects ranging from Nazi Germany's tank production through oil consumption by the Axis powers. Winks does not shrink from judgments. At one point, for instance, he suggests that the CIA's troubles have been at least partially attributable to "its growing inability to attract liberally educated men and women who knew that civic responsibility arose in good measure from a shared sense of morality." Nor is the author overly enthusiastic about the secret services' latter-day willingness to rely on machines rather than brainpower. A very special book--one that affords insights as well as intelligence.