THE BASTARD BRIGADE

THE TRUE STORY OF THE RENEGADE SCIENTISTS AND SPIES WHO SABOTAGED THE NAZI ATOMIC BOMB

The Bastard Brigade was the nickname given to the US scientific intelligence mission, code-named Alsos, which investigated the Nazi bomb. Kean’s book is ‘a fast-paced and rollicking ride, even though it goes off the rails factually in a few places,’ wrote Gregg Herken in the

Washington Post. ‘Kean centres his narrative on the colourful and unlikely individuals in this drama’, for example, ‘Moe Berg, a former major league catcher who became an atom spy and would-be assassin’ and ‘Boris Pash, a former Hollywood High School baseball coach with Russian roots who was put in charge of wartime Army counterintelligence on the West Coast’.

In the Wall Street Journal, Robert S Norris complained that the book ‘breaks no new ground’ and ‘attributions to source materials are far from clear... In 59 fast-paced chapters, some only two pages long, Mr Kean hopscotches around the globe, describing colourful characters, some of whom had only limited or no connection to the Nazi bomb. The result is a popularised account of the external efforts to slow or halt the German atomic programme.’

Ben Macintyre, reviewing it for the Times, was only a little less harsh: ‘There is no law that says that history has to be scholarly, ponderous and profound. War includes frequent moments of hilarity and humour, and lightness amid the darkness... The Bastard

Brigade is the past as fun, adventure and drama, a complex and often sinister story told through cartoons, colloquialisms and jokes; Horrible

Histories for grown-ups.’