This entry was contributed by my mother, Linda McGaughy (MA from Marywood, 1978). Thanks for the review mom!What do Ian Fleming, Robert Sherwood, and J. Edgar Hoover have in common? – World War II and William Donovan and the OSS, the spy organization that preceded the CIA. Wild Bill Donovan, a compendium of adventures and famous historical characters, is ripe for a movie on the scale of Lawrence of Arabia or a James Bond flick. Weapons proposed for OSS use range from ridiculous to frightening. Intricate and fascinating details typify the author’s research. (Waller’s impressive in-depth research is explained and credited at the close of the book – “must” reading in itself.) Such research reveals that people from many walks of life wanted to serve their country during this challenging time, and the OSS was one way to do so. I can attest to this from personal knowledge of a long-time friend of the family, a former concert pianist who, despite her aging arthritic fingers, could still make that piano in our house come alive when she visited in the 1950s. A decade later her startling revelation to her young relative who was considering the CIA as a career was that she used her musical ability as her cover while serving with the OSS. She warned that espionage is extremely dangerous, that there were times when she had to flee immediately from a location with no time to go back for her belongings. Wild Bill Donovan is a biography brings the daring of the past to life again.
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