During and immediately after World War II, an unlikely band of librarians and scholars, soldiers and spies were dispatched to Europe to collect books and documents, to acquire and preserve the written word as well as provide critical information for intelligence purposes. Through savvy research Kathy Peiss has uncovered the enormous historical, ethical, and personal stakes of Americans' overseas efforts to collect-or destroy-the printed word during World War II. Her vivid account follows teams of scholars who scoured Europe's bookstores, battered cities, castles, and caves in search of material that bore witness to the continent's cultural heritage as well as its lies, secrets, and crimes. Pulling a book off the shelf of an American research library will never be the same after reading Information Hunters.