Reader recommendation: A Very Principled Boy

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

June 16, 2014

A Very Principled Boy: The Life of Duncan Lee, Red Spy and Cold Warrior by Mark A. Bradley is a remarkable book if for no other reason then the fact that America's World War II intelligence chief, the director of the Office of Strategic Services, William "Wild Bill" Donovan, placed a Soviet spy outside his office to monitor all communications coming and going. And Duncan Lee, a descendant of one of Virginia's most distinguished families, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, and a product of Yale, was never prosecuted. Donovan just wouldn't accept that his aide was a traitor. After all, Lee was a very principled boy.