
In this kindle single, Talty chronicles the career of Erik Ericsson, who helped defeat the Nazis by pretending to be one. Talty tells the story well, and it is a good quick read.
After reading both this and Talty's Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day, I must say Talty's biographies are a refreshing change. Too often in biographies of famous men, the biography ties him or herself into knots to excuse bad behavior OR depicts the spouse as somehow lacking. IF x was truly worthy of y, she would have understand type of thing. I'm thinking in particular of the pretzel that Ackroyd makes trying to argue that Dickens did not have sex with the young women he abandoned his wife for (Dickens' treatment of his wife is absolutely horrible) and of Ron Chernow's implying that if a pregnant Elizabeth Hamilton had just stayed in hot, disease filled NYC than good Alex would have never been unfaithful. Talty doesn't whitewash or even try to whitewash the damage that Ericsson's acts had on his wife. And his wife is not depicted as shallow or evil because she had trouble handling what her husband was doing. I cannot stress how wonderful that is to see in a biography.