The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi

Bascomb, Neal. The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi . Scholastic, 2013. 256pp. Lexile 1000.

 In 1960, six agents from Israel's Mossad intelligence operations tracked down and captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who had orchestrated the deaths of millions of Jews.  This adaptation of Hunting Eichmann, the author's book for adults, conveys the story in context with intriguing details and well-chosen quotations from primary sources.  Eichmann was living in Argentina, a country not likely to facilitate the capture, so the agents worked secretly.  After verifying the identity of Eichmann, who was working in a factory, the Mossad agents carefully put their plan into action.  Each of the agents on the team had a strength--languages, falsifying documents, building secret compartments.  Most of them had relatives killed in the Holocaust, which gave the mission an unusual level of meaning, knowing they'd meet one of the men responsible for their loss.  Without fictionalizing, this reads like a spy novel but one with a deep emotional impact. 

Reading Std #3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.  The author does a good job of building suspense throughout the story, even for the reader who knows at the beginning what will happen to Eichmann.  Have students analyze the text to see how the author creates tension in the reader through the pacing.  How does he use structure and language to speed up and slow down the pace?  How does this compare to techniques used to create suspense in fiction?

Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Sheinkin, Steve. Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon. 2012. 266pp. Lexile 920.
 
During World War II, the U.S. raced Germany to build an atomic bomb.  Germany needed a heavy water plant in Nazi-occupied Norway to succeed so resistance fighters in Norway, backed by the British, schemed to destroy the plant.  Meanwhile the Soviets, knowing they couldn't catch up, sought to steal the technology from the Americans.  In a skillful narrative, Sheinkin plays these three stories off of each other, ratcheting up the suspense in each of them.  He draws a striking picture of Robert Oppenheimer and his team of physicists at Los Alamos who, unknown to them, had spies for the Soviets in their midst.  Their excitement over their research and especially testing the bomb contrasts with their increasing concern about its consequences. The attempts at sabotage by the Norwegians will have readers on the edge of their seats.  A real sense of drama, grounded in rich details and quotes, pervades this must-read nonfiction on one of the most important topics of our time. Winner of the Sibert Award and the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. A Newbery Honor Book and one of five National Book Award Finalists.  Bibliography, source notes, index. 

Reading Std #3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.  The development and interaction of the three main threads are key to this book's effectiveness.  Have students analyze how and why Sheinkin combined them.  They can also look at how Oppenheimer changes over the course of the book.  Another possible topic to track is the morality of building and using the bomb, which emerges as a theme with arguments on both sides.

The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from the Revolution to the 21st Century

Janeczko, Paul B. The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from the Revolution to the 21st Century. 2010. 256pp. Lexile 1200.

This YALSA Nonfiction Award Honor Book will appeal to spy and war buffs alike.  Of the twelve chapters about spies, some highlight individuals such as Civil War spy Rose O'Neale Greenhow and CIA agent Aldrich Ames.  Other chapters describe a group or project including the 1950s Berlin spy tunnel.  Between chapters are extensive sidebars on specific topics related to spying: invisible ink, gadgets and gizmos, spy satellites, and more.  Janeczko's smooth writing incorporates intriguing details about people and danger in each story.  The chapters can be read separately, in conjunction with a time period from the Revolutionary War to the 1980s, or read in order to get a sense of the changes over time to the dark game.

Nonfiction Tie-ins  A number of other nonfiction titles expand on topics in this book.  Readers interested in reading about Revolutionary War spies in more depth should try Thomas Allen's excellent George Washington, Spymaster.  The chapter on Benedict Arnold can be paired with Jim Murphy's The Real Benedict Arnold or Steve Sheinkin's The Notorious Benedict Arnold.  Janeczko also has an earlier book titled Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing.

Fiction Tie-in  Fans of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series, which begins with Stormbreaker, might enjoy this book.