Book Review: The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb (2019). Sam Kean.

This history book is an account of the small number of scientists, OSS (U.S. Office of Strategic Services) and SOE (British Special Operations Executive) members, political and military figures and oddballs who worked to prevent Hitler and the Germans from developing atomic weapons in World War II.

It includes the story of Mel Berg, a well-known Major League Baseball figure and Red Sox catcher (and a secret OSS agent), some of whose exploits, including an attempted assassination of the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in Switzerland were also the subject of a recent very good spy movie, The Catcher Was a Spy (2018).

Numerous other famous and less well-known figures also played a part in the narrative, and the efforts to deny the Nazis the atomic bomb. This was an intriguing look down another of the endless little byways of the World War II story. Recommended.