Compared across 2 stores. Prices are checked against each store and labelled with when. Store links may earn us a commission. As an Amazon Associate, Deal.ai earns from qualifying purchases.
It checks today's price at every store, compares the alternatives and answers in about a minute.
Alex Kershaw's Avenue of Spies tells the true story of Sumner Jackson, an American surgeon at the American Hospital in Paris who ran Allied airmen out of occupied France through the French resistance. The hook is the address: Jackson lived at 11 Avenue Foch, with Gestapo headquarters at 84 and Eichmann aide Theodor Dannecker at 31. Kershaw builds the book from family papers, diaries and archives, and it reads as narrative history rather than analysis. It suits readers of popular WWII espionage stories; against heavier academic accounts of the occupation, it trades depth for pace and a tight family story.
In stock
Availability unknown
As an Amazon Associate, Deal.ai earns from qualifying purchases.
Store links may earn us a commission.
Lowest price we've seen: $12.99 on Nov 12 at Amazon. Tracked across 1 store since Nov 12.
Readers respond well to the book as a fast, suspenseful true story, and many single out the Avenue Foch setting and the Jackson family's fate. Criticism tends to focus on the writing and on how much is reconstruction rather than documented fact.
Avenue of Spies is a work of narrative nonfiction by Alex Kershaw, author of The Liberator. It tells the true story of Sumner Jackson, an American physician living in Nazi-occupied Paris with his wife and young son Phillip at Number 11, Avenue Foch.
Avenue Foch was one of the city's most exclusive residential streets and a center of spies, secret police, informers, and Vichy collaborators. Number 31 was home to Theodor Dannecker, an Eichmann protégé charged with deporting French Jews to concentration camps. Number 84 housed the Gestapo's Parisian headquarters.
From his office at the American Hospital, Jackson smuggled fallen Allied fighter pilots out of France. He joined the Liberation network of the French resistance and invited it to operate from his home. When his Nazi neighbors discovered his secret life, he and his family were forced into a journey through war-torn Europe. The book draws on primary source material and extensive interviews with Phillip Jackson.
