Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022
Vanity Fair, Best Books of 2022
Booklist, Best Books of 2022
Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France.
Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all "negroes and Jews." Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy.
In Agent Josephine , bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer's life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers--a cover for her spying work--Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served--the US, France, and Britain.
Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-452) and index.
"In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer's life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers--a cover for her spying work--Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served--the US, France, and Britain"-- Provided by publisher.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Josephine Baker moved from St. Louis to France in the early 1920s and quickly became a highly successful entertainer, renowned for her costumes and energetic performances. Lewis's (Operation Relentless) biography captures another facet of Baker: her role as a spy for the Allied Forces during World War II. How does a world-famous Black celebrity become a successful intelligence agent? By hiding in plain sight, Lewis argues. Having grown up in American segregation, Baker understood discrimination and instinctively recognized Nazism as an insidious evil. While performing throughout the war, often for British and American troops, Baker worked with her road manager/companion Jacques Abtey to gather intelligence for the Allied Forces, often risking their lives in treacherous settings. Even when gravely ill and confined to a clinic in Casablanca, Baker turned her hospital room into a conduit of information. She and Abtey later earned accolades for their wartime service. VERDICT An extensive, well-researched tribute to Baker's bravery; will appeal to any fan of biographies of outstanding women.--Penelope J.M. Klein
Publishers Weekly Review
After fleeing the poverty and racism of St. Louis, Mo., to seek fame and fortune in Europe, Josephine Baker (1906--1975) gave "the greatest performance of her life" as a WWII spy, according to this scintillating biography. Historian Lewis (Churchill's Band of Brothers) draws on newly discovered letters and diaries to paint a vivid portrait of Baker as "a chameleon, a rebel, a warrior, and a rule-breaker at heart." Recruited by French intelligence officials in 1939, Baker's first assignment was to befriend an attaché at the Italian embassy in Paris and find out if Mussolini planned to form an alliance with Hitler. She also helped determine Japan's wartime intentions, identified Abwehr agents in Paris, and ferried classified intelligence--written in invisible ink on musical scores--across enemy lines. In addition to her espionage work, Baker flew aid missions to refugees and entertained U.S. troops and dignitaries at the Liberty Club in Casablanca. Lewis stuffs the narrative with intriguing digressions about wartime intelligence activities, including a U.S. plan to help the Mafia smuggle cigarettes into Morocco in exchange for intelligence, and vividly evokes the "intense and tumultuous affair" between Baker and her chief handler, Jacques Abtey. The result is a thrilling espionage story perfect for fans of Lynne Olson's Madame Fourcade's Secret War. (July)
Booklist Review
One of the greatest and most successful women in espionage was legendary African American entertainer Josephine Baker, who used her charm, intelligence, and sheer bravado as a key member serving the French resistance during WWII. Like many Black expatriates, Baker had fled American racism to Paris, becoming fiercely devoted to her adopted country. Confronted with a direct threat of Nazism (Goebbels denounced her as "decadent" and an enemy of the German state), she parlayed her glamorous, outsized personality into the perfect assets for an intelligence agent. Chatting up ambassadors at diplomatic parties, she casually extracted information about Axis plans, sometimes scribbling notes on her arms or hiding them in her underwear. Her magnificent country estate, Château des Milandes, became a hideout for refugees and Resistance workers. On the pretext of touring, she was able to smuggle documents to the Free French and intel about German troop movements to the British. As a pilot she flew desperately needed aid to refugees in the Netherlands. Lewis provides a rollicking, energetic commentary on Baker's adventures, noting her sangfroid in face of German interrogators and her boundless compassion for wounded soldiers and war victims. Lewis also reveals her quirky side, her bawdy humor, her spats with jealous fellow entertainers, and her ill-advised love affair with spy chief Jacques Abtey. Lewis' biography is set to be adapted for a miniseries starring Janelle Monáe as the remarkably talented and courageous Agent Baker.
Kirkus Book Review
A breathless, sympathetic chronicle of the wartime exploits of Josephine Baker (1906-1975). Rather than crafting a conventional biography, Lewis concentrates on the wartime years, creating a heroic portrait of the selfless, brave, somewhat reckless, pioneering, unswervingly patriotic spy for the Allies who was active even before the Nazi occupation of Paris, where she lived and worked. In a suspenseful, serpentine narrative, the author piles on the detail about Britain's Secret Intelligence Service in France, an agency that worked closely with the Deuxième Bureau, France's counterespionage service. All were locked in an intelligence battle with the Abwehr, "Nazi Germany's much expanded intelligence service," which "sought to overwhelm and subvert her enemies." Baker, who had been performing in Paris since the early 1920s--after fleeing her impoverished Jim Crow youth in St. Louis and experiencing further hardship in New York City--was running her own club, Chez Josephine, and hobnobbing with admirers of all nationalities. Due to her line of work, she was effective in feeling out the allegiances of significant figures from Italy, Japan, and Spain without raising suspicion. Baker's Deuxième Bureau supervisor, Capt. Jacques Abtey, also became her lover. "Theirs would prove an intense and tumultuous affair," writes Lewis, "but one with a special magic all of its own." After being forced to retreat during the occupation, they worked in various remote locales and slipped effortlessly across national borders. Lewis shows readers how Baker's difficult life experiences served her well as an agent. "Josephine had never once had it easy," he writes. "At every stage she had had to fight, to graft and to work unbelievably hard to get ahead. Josephine was blessed with a core of steely fortitude--an unbreakable spirit that was hard wired into her soul." The author also explores how her wartime work profoundly affected the rest of her life, imperiling her health but also setting her on the postwar course of civil rights activism. A complex, entertaining story of intrigue and sangfroid involving a beloved, courageous hero. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
TextPublisher: New York : PublicAffairs, 2022Edition: First US editionDescription: xxvi, 466 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cmContent type: