Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe

by Kathy Peiss

While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars traveled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause. Galvanized by the events of war into acquiring and preserving the written word, as well as providing critical information for intelligence purposes, these American civilians set off on missions to gather foreign publications and information across Europe. They journeyed to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was to document, exploit, preserve, and restitute these works, and even, in the case of Nazi literature, to destroy them. In this fascinating account, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front. These collecting missions also boosted the postwar ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for them to become great international repositories of scientific reports, literature, and historical sources. Not only did their wartime work have lasting implications for academic institutions, foreign-policy making, and national security, it also led to the development of today's essential information science tools. Illuminating the growing global power of the United States in the realms of intelligence and cultural heritage, Peiss tells the story of the men and women who went to Europe to collect and protect books and information and in doing so enriches the debates over the use of data in times of both war and peace.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, World War II, Books About Books, War, Audiobook, Holocaust

291 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 2, 2020

About the author

Kathy Peiss is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on modern American cultural history and the history of American sexuality, women, and gender. Her research has examined the history of working women; working-class and interracial sexuality; leisure, style, and popular culture; the beauty industry in the U.S. and abroad; and libraries, information, and American cultural policy during World War II. She is particularly interested in the ways culture shapes the everyday lives and popular beliefs of Americans across time.

Reviews

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a librarian who's interested in World War II history, this book is right up my alley.

Librarians helped the war effort in two major ways:

They went to Europe during the war, usually neutral countries like Portugal and Sweden, and collected open source publications to send to the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) for analysis of German capabilities.

The second way was after the war, when they provided a similar service to that of the Monuments Men, but with plundered libraries and books. This was a more difficult effort than restitution of art, since they were dealing with millions of books in disarray, many of them with no ownership marks. The political arguments of what to do with these books, many of them from Jewish sources that no longer existed, make a fascinating study.

The book also shows how newly creative forms of indexing and cataloging were needed, and how men who later became pioneers in library automation and management (such as Jesse Shera and Frederick Kilgour who created OCLC) gained necessary expertise.

This book is written more as an academic work than as a popular work, and would mainly appeal to those interested in either library history or the redistribution of bibliographic works after the war.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herbert Hoover, treasure hunter, bibliophile and war looter? Honestly, I wasn't aware he was up to things after his failed presidency, but there you go.

Anywho, an in-depth history of the rapid collection of bookish materials throughout Nazi-occupied Europe after the fall of Berlin, coupled with the de-Nazification of German libraries and schools. Book burning, book pulping, and book hunting all feature, as does the Library of Congress (and we learn just *how* their collection grew so rapidly during WWII).

[Magnus Bernhardsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good thing about this book is that it doesn't spend much time on each of the objects lost or destroyed. Taking in the destruction of libraries and culture is soulcrushing, and when Peiss writes in more general terms it is easier to take in the issues of ownership and logistics etc.

The book is most interesting when dealing with the recovery and rescue of the stolen an lost books and libraries. The part about intelligence services buying books and other publications was maybe more new to me, but also a bit dull.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a slow but worthwhile read; I started out reading but completed the book by listening along, and the style and pacing of the narrator (Suzanne Toren) really focused my attention. The book is about how various wartime and postwar governmental departments and organizations, including the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC), the Hoover Library, and the Library of Congress, recognized the importance of acquiring and preserving publications, artifacts, and information, many of them of historical and cultural significance, during World War II. There are many interesting anecdotes, much fascinating detail, and a few figures who stand out in their efforts to preserve and archive history in the face of many challenges. War is chaos; and yet, many of the scholars and librarians who worked at the archival depots after the war were able to reunite treasures with the libraries and private collections that they were looted from. Sadly, many were not able to be restored to their owners, and the author addresses this in terms of the potential complicity of some who brought the items from Europe to the U.S., as well as the LOC's and Jewish Cultural Reconstruction's mission to recognize their holdings as "a collection that shared the experience of war, looting, and genocide, as well as a sense of communal restoration" (213).

Some of the most interesting chapters concerned preservation versus destruction: at what point does the figurative burning of books make the Americans like the Nazis they opposed, philosophically, and fought? Should any Nazi literature be preserved, and if so, how should it be collected, catalogued, and presented to the German public? As governments (the U.S, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union), librarians, and civil libertarians wrestled with these questions, it became clear that there were no easy answers: the authoritarian Soviets favored the confiscation and elimination of all Nazi works; the others, recognizing the power of books as a symbol of freedom and Western democracy, felt that "the historical record was vital for future generations to understand the horrors of this era and avoid them in the future" (160).

This is an impressive work of scholarship about a group of people who dedicated themselves to a thankless and Herculean task, helping to preserve knowledge, culture, and history. The author has a personal connection; her uncle, Reuben Peiss, was a Harvard librarian who worked for the OSS during the war in intelligence gathering; after the war, he worked for the LOC on the mission the book portrays. Her book is a strong testimony to his considerable skills, wartime exploits, and love of the written word.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peiss got interested in this topic by learning that her uncle, librarian Reuben Peiss, was instrumental in American efforts to gather European open information sources during World War II. This initiative, headed up by various agencies created by the army and Library of Congress, was trying to learn all it could about Nazi politics, troop movements and strategy by gleaning information from books and newspapers published in Europe.

In addition to this, Kathy Peiss covers efforts to recover the bibliographic patrimony of Jewish communities hoarded and dispersed during the war and the enormous efforts by the Allies to try and make sense of the mess created by it. Amidst the looting and greed they didn't always succeed, but the sheer volume of volumes must have been so overwhelming.

I thought that librarians were bad about using acronyms to describe committees, groups and initiatives, but when you combine them with the US Army -- whoo boy. I did find the cascade of acronyms a bit confusing and found myself glossing over who was doing what because I'd lost track of what they all meant. Still, some individuals stood out. I especially admired former Library of Congress librarian Jose Meyer. She ran around pre-war and occupied Paris scouring shops and libraries for books, pamphlets and posters right under the Nazi's noses.

As a librarian, I was interested to learn that some of the library companies I'm familiar with today, like UMI/Proquest and OCLC were founded by librarians that worked in these programs.

It took me a while to get through this. The sections about organizations and meetings didn't always grab my attention. But the individual stories did. And the final section in which Peiss describes one particular volume given to her by her uncle highlights all the passion of those involved, and raises many of the questions about ownership and the find line between preservation and looting that underlie many of the initiatives taken during that time. A cool little corner of WWII history that I'd known nothing about, this was quite interesting.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are looking for an action-packed tale of intrigue tying librarians to World War II espionage, I am not sure this is really the book for you. It does live up to the promise telling the stories of how librarians, the military, and American spies teamed up to collect and preserve literature, books, and official documents from the Axis power areas. Much of what they collected both preserved information of the cultures of those regions both during and prior to the war, but they also often provided information for military and governmental leaders to make decisions at the warfront.

There is no question that the information provided is very thorough. While it is a fairly short read, it is very dense with content. To be honest, the best way to describe it is academic, which kind of drains the book of some of the qualities of being an interesting read. Facts are presented in a very flat and bland presentation. a wide range of individuals are represented for the actions they took without allowing the reader to really have any sense of who they are or have any feelings toward them or their actions. This feels odd even while reading about these people as they are facing great dangers including capture, mines, and other situations that should really draw the reader in.

The book seems almost torn between providing micro coverage of the topic and micro coverage of the specific people involved. The result is that neither is really covered well and information seems not be covered in a very linear manner. It lacks a sense of storytelling that would make the content a lot more interesting.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting factoids, but if you are mot already interested, this book will not do it for you.

Still, who knew?

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delightful read. Librarian spies from the Library of Congress deployed to Europe and Asia during WWII - who knew? And in the process they launched the discipline of open source intelligence, harvesting books and periodicals that provided vital information to decision-makers back in Washington.

The book’s chapters on the war years read like spy fiction, but the parts that cover the war’s aftermath are no less riveting. In the free-for-all atmosphere of liberation, there was a mad scramble to secure all kinds of documents, from trade and scientific journals (economic spoils of victory) to Nazi records that would enable the prosecution of war crimes.

Equally interesting was the discussion of occupying forces’ attempts to control the post-war information space. How to root out Nazism without resorting to Nazi-like censure and book burning? This anti-democratic behavior struck a particular chord with the American public as the Cold War dawned.

And then there was the massive restitution effort to return stolen and looted books from Jews and other persecuted groups, in which librarians also played a role (an effort that was separate from and far more challenging than the work of the famed “Monuments Men.”)

Super fascinating from start to finish.

[Karen (Living Unabridged) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly a page-turner, but it's fascinating background material. Librarians (and librarian types) served two essential roles that have been somewhat forgotten at this point: one, collecting books, papers, etc. that served as intelligence during the war. Two, collecting damaged libraries and materials after the war. (Somewhat like the more famous Monuments Men did with art and other treasure.)

One of my favorite chapters was about Lisbon and all the intrigue and goings on during the war. (Told my game designer husband that someone needs to make THAT game.)

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe by Kathy Peiss is such a fascinating bookish read that puts forth a lot of details from the war that I didn't realize. However, it's a little too dry. At times, it's almost boring when it really shouldn't be one bit.

[Angela Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Kathy Peiss tells a story that needs to be told. Her familial connection makes me curious about my own family history during the war. I highly recommend this book.

[Kenya | Reviews May Vary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Information Hunters is a non-fiction account of how spies, librarians, and soldiers contributed to the victory in World War II Europe through the finding, use, and sometimes destruction of written materials. This was the first time that there was an intentional effort to use information as part of the war effort in this way. It really highlights how war is fought through the cultural overtaking of other people. I enjoyed being introduced to real people in history whose contribution to the war efforts were bookish! Reading this via audiobook really helped bring the content to life; for me, it would have felt dry otherwise. I think this would be a great book for anyone who is interested in World War II or in information sciences.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book suggests some great stories about how information and books were collected and preserved during and just after the Second World War, but the book itself does not fulfill the promise of adventure inherent in the title. Yes, this book is about many efforts by U.S. personnel to rescue and preserve documents and books during and just after the Second World War--so many overlapping efforts that it was terribly disorganized at the time and would be terrible to try to organize into a coherent book (there was very little "banding together"). For the second part, about looted Jewish books and artifacts, the author manages pretty well. But the first part involves a lot of overlapping missions, including (1) efforts by American agents to recover and use for military intelligence various "open source" documents, like newspapers and journals being published in Europe during the war; (2) efforts by military "T-Squads" to get to abandoned German and other records as the front moved back toward Germany, before they could be destroyed, used for kindling, pulped, or looted; (3) efforts by a morass of American organizations, some official and some not, such as the Library of Congress Mission, the Hoover Institution's agents (representing a research library at Stanford University), the military, the OSS, and others (including agents of other Allies) to get any and all documents for various uses--to stock international collections at U.S. and European research libraries, to use information for intelligence purposes, and to prevent unique and valuable books from being destroyed or looted so they could be saved or even restored to their owners. That last sentence may give you some idea of what a mess the author was trying to organize--should the effort be described by the kind of document, the organization or people trying to acquire the documents, or what? Each would involve some overlap, and the author never quite decides. Also thrown in there from time to time is notice that the "Monuments Men" were around, but not really interested in books and documents, being more oriented toward fine art and actual monuments, like historic buildings. So the first part of the book is hard to follow and I wish the author and her editors could have run it through the "how to best organize this?" mill another time or two. But what's really missing from the book are some people's stories and examples of how particular documents were almost destroyed or looted and how important they were, and maybe how they were restored to their owners, just to give the reader some touchstones.

Despite that omission, the book makes clear that the war produced literal tons of documents and books, some more worth preserving than others. An entire chapter (rather than scattered mentions throughout the book) could have been devoted to how the Americans dealt with the need to destroy, or at least get out of Nazi and German hands, the vast amount of propaganda and Nazified literature and textbooks, without resorted to the techniques of the Nazis themselves (such as book-burning and restricting access). Other topics could have had their own, more detailed and focused chapters, but I can almost hear the editors saying, "then the book would be too long. No one will want to read it." But it could have been much more useful and better organized for a researcher and a committed reader.

I think the author and her editors were having trouble deciding whether the book should be shorter and more readable, and thus more popular and saleable, or should be the definitive research source on its subjects, which would have made it longer, less readable to the general reader, and probably sell less. As it is, they did not land squarely on either choice. The author has done a lot of research, beginning with her discovery that her uncle was one of the document gatherers/spies, but she doesn't tell of his or any of his compatriots' clandestine adventures, once again missing a chance to connect to the reader if those stories were available. She suggests that the efforts described in the book led to the modern field of information science and to the current way of doing things in library science, including eventually WorldCat and collections such as ProQuest, but doesn't trace that story in any detail. The definitive stories could have, and probably should have, taken up more than one book. This one is not as thorough as it could have been to create a book truly helpful for research but is too much of a tome to be a popular, general read, as the title suggests it was meant to be.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 *
After reading The Book Thieves by Anders Rydell (2015), I found out about this book. Peiss' Information Hunters is an unexpectedly appropriate follow-up to The Book Thieves. In Peiss' work, the story of the books looted and appropriated by the Nazis during World War II is told from the perspective of the Allied groups who tried to save them (in various degrees of ethicality). During the war, the OSS (the predecessor of CIA) was created in an attempt to gather and preserve critical information needed for the U.S. military. After the war's end, however, various groups – members of the Monuments Men, agents for the Hoover Library or the Library of Congress, military agents, and more – scoured the ruins of the countries destroyed by the Nazis, rushing ahead of the Russians in an attempt to gather and store the literary works stolen by the Nazis. Some works would then by plundered again by Allied powers during the rebuilding of Europe, but many would be on the path to restitution or would define the place literary works have in a culture's heritage and global community. Do books of cultural value belong to an individual, or to a culture? To the victors, or the victims? Peiss' personal attachment to the events she accounts make this more than an reflection on these questions, but a deep analysis of the importance of literary works – and their place in our history. Illuminating a little known piece of history, Information Hunters expands on the fate of books found and taken by the Allied powers during and after World War II... with provocative conclusions.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

With my interests, this was a remarkable book. I am moderately interested in history of World War II and separately from that librarianship, so this book which features discussion of librarians (and others) during and shortly after WWII was remarkable.

The author is not a librarian - one of the most remarkable aspects of this book is the author's clear grasp and discussion of library related issues.

https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015762 - has publisher's summary of the book.

Table of contents
The country of the mind must also attack
Librarians and collectors go to war
The wild scramble for documents
Acquisitions on a Grand Scale
Fugitive Records of War
Book Burning-American Style
Not a Library, but a Large Depot of Loot.

The book moves from discussion of librarians and others assisting to gather open source materials to support intelligence activities against Nazi Germany to librarians (and again others) working to assure repatriation of Nazi-seized collections from Jews and others to their rightful owners with other subjects mixed in.

https://www.loc.gov/item/mff000208/ photograph of the Library of Congress Mission (LCM) who traveled to Europe after the end of WWII. "Photograph of [Librarian of Congress] Luther Harris Evans and Members of the European Mission, January 1946".

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating journey tracing the history of looted, misplaced and lost books and manuscripts during WWII. While I knew quite a bit about the Nazi looting of art and restoration by the Monuments Men, I had never before considered the millions of books looted from libraries, universities and private collections across occupied Europe.

How a good portion of the books were identified post war and redistributed around the world makes for a page turning last part of the book and explores thought-provoking questions of who "owns" the cultural heritage of a people largely exterminated.

The early parts of the book, beginning with the effort of American librarians assigned to collect and microfilm critical published information, maps and the like during the war in a "spying" effort - to the task of shipping as many publications as possible back to the US during the war to the Library of Congress was very detailed reading and sluggish with minutia at times.

The part on "cleansing" Germany and the occupied countries of Nazi literature and published propaganda post war was chock-full of thorny questions about censorship, book burning and free speech questions. Anyone who has ever loved books, or compiled a library will appreciate this richly detailed and little chronicled part of the dark history of Nazi Germany.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book addresses an interesting topic, but not very well. The chronology is difficult to follow. Loose threads are left all over the place. Digressions are taken. The author has the academician's gift of using a lot of verbiage to say not all that much. I felt like I floated along the surface of the topic while rarely actually dipping in. Disappointing for a >200 page monograph from Oxford University Press.

But as I said, the topic is interesting enough: we all know about the Monuments Men (thanks, George Clooney), but the Library of Congress also send men and women to Europe over before, during, and after America's involvement in World War II to collect as much literature as possible. This was for intelligence purposes during the war (in conjunction with the OSS) and for the sake of rescuing, commandeering, and at times returning looted volumes after the war. I wish the story had been told better. It could be; and Hollywood need not even be involved.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful text on the largely overlooked effort to acquire books and reading materials during and after WWII in Europe. The pressures were manifold: often decentralized objectives, competing demands (prioritizing book acquisition against intelligence purposes), decisions over handling material promoting Nazism, preserving European and Jewish cultural heritage—all amidst a hellish landscape decimated by war (made ever more challenging with Allied bombings destroying libraries and bookstores) and complex postwar relationships. Peiss’s discussion of how libraries responded in the wake of WWI through the end of these varied operations in Europe in the late-1940s provides a useful understanding of how Americans’ understanding of books and information evolved over the first half of the 20th century. It also demonstrates that ne’er-do-wells are very much an element of that story, despite such noble intentions.

[Terry Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly detailed

This is a very thorough look at the development, creation, implementation and activities of several agencies and key people that collected and restored information for the OSS and Library of Congress.
It starts out as a means to collect knowledge and books. Later, the OSS would learn that the real mission beyond preservation of knowledge and culture was that the real product was actionable information.
The author details key people, locations and collections. It is rich with photos and a bibliography of primary sources.
This book is an accompaniment to the history of the Monuments Men, yet is also a crucial stand alone history in itself.
There is some redundancy, but this is important to how one follows the myriad connected rat lines and links across people, continents and activities.
This is truly a rich book in many ways and sense.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me, this book was hard to follow. I wasn't quite sure how it was organized...it seemed to jump back and forth in time, and it was also difficult to track who the different people were. What I took away from it, the effort to gather, preserve, protect information during and immediately after the war was chaotic. I appreciated how this was the first war where Information-through literature and propoganda seemed to play an outsized role. (At least from my limited vantage point.) I can only imagine how increaseing complicated the documenting and tracking of information has grown over time and completely appreciate the value of librarians!!

I'm sure this book well done--but my mind just wasn't really able to process it well at this time. I'm glad to have read it, but didn't get as much out of it as I hoped.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

50/50 Book Quest category: Information (because there's tons of information in this book, and "Information" is also in the title!

This book was phenomenal! The author covers pre-war, wartime, and post-war information collection, information science, and book reparations. It was amazing to read how librarians and others acquired intelligence information and then Nazi/German and Jewish book from hidden caches. I especially liked the part toward the end when the author detailed how all of these experiences, groups, special programs, and people affected the library profession as we now know it! I wish this would have been detailed more instead of left for the very end. Interestingly, these experiences and people led to the creation of OCLC and WorldCat!

I highly recommend this book to war aficionados, librarians, and anyone interested in history!

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an academic librarian with an interest in the history of scholarly communication, I really wanted to like this book but maybe I was expecting less of an academic research project, more of a spy story. Instead there is a lot of buying and confiscating of books and other documents, both during and after World War II. It's an interesting bit of history and I had not previously understood how profoundly these efforts shaped the subsequent evolution of research libraries and of information science as a field. It's also a bit morally murky. Some of the actions described in the book undoubtedly saved books that would otherwise have been lost, destroyed or disappeared into private collections, but it's hard not to see some of America's actions as just straight-up looting of cultural and technological works, as the author acknowledges.

[Paul Goble · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not finish. I wouldn't rule out coming back and finishing the book some day, but for now it just wasn't worth my reading energy.
The writing is fairly dry and academic. The content calls out for a story line, but there isn't a consistent flow or story--there's lots of hopping around the timeline. It's the kind of writing I produce when I spend lots of time in libraries taking notes on notecards, then attempt to sort all of the facts and create some kind of readable narrative. Filled with interesting tidbits that give perspective on modern librarianship. The author's story is interesting--she's a historian, but went from zero to world-class expert by spending years plumbing library basements, visiting museums, and interviewing families.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fascinating! Kudos to Peiss and the enormous amount of research she did. I will say, this is not for the casual reader. It's very academic, and although only 7 (long) chapters --plus I was highly motivated to read it given my work in libraries and my workplace--it took me a while to finish it. It's absolutely a fantastic book to reference about this time period, the work done, and decisions made about collecting, preserving, and ownership of publications during and immediately after WWII. My favorite chapters were 1, 6 & 7 ‐ I found the "now what?" post-WWII decisions were so interesting to grapple with. I've brought up this book in a number of conversations, and it even helped answer a reference question.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book covered much more after the war (repatriating or legalized looting of books) than during (gathering reading material from Axis countries), including a lot of what happened to books sent to the United States. However, I've read historical fiction novels that covered this topic better, such as The Librarian Spy for during the war and The Lost Book of Bonn for after.

[Lianne Burwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid (but not exciting) book about the work of librarians before and during WWII (collecting materials of strategic importance), and after (de-nazifying Germany and sorting through and preserving books published and looted by the Germans). The afterword also shows how this affected library science going forward from there. Think Monuments Men for books.

Now I want to see if there are any novels about the work of people hunting down information during the war through obtaining papers and books for the allied forces in neutral Portugal. There is clearly a spy thriller in that story, I think.

[Stella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the paper book. More a scholarly tome, the book largely struggles with the ethical issues surrounding the "collecting" efforts of the American libraries during and immediately after World War II. A somewhat tedious read in parts, but the chapter in restitution of looted Jewish books and heritage objects is very poignant and touching. Still, learned a lot about the efforts of American librarians to save books and documents during the war, even if for sometimes questionable reasons. Best appreciated by a librarian.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topics that this book explores and reports on are really interesting. Chapters on how librarians collected newspapers, resistance documents, propaganda, etc for historical and military intelligence; the denazification of libraries after WWII; the sorting of all the looted Jewish books; and determining who should “get” these pieces of history. Really, really interesting but it’s written like a textbook and it wasn’t great reading right before bed😁

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 I’m fascinated by the history of looted art during World War II and being a journalist and avid reader/collector, this book was—for the most part—right up my alley. Still, I think it would have limited popular appeal. The author is a history professor and also has a family connection to the history so it’s more than an academic work, but I couldn’t help thinking that it also would have made an excellent doctoral dissertation.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a really interesting piece of historical information that I didn't know about before. However...this book was very dense. It was difficult to get through and I feel like I will probably end up looking some of this information up and find more digestible pieces. I read this just for myself, but I'm also in grad school and my brain doesn't have room for pleasure books that need this much effort.