The Woman Who Fought an Empire

In The Woman Who Fought an Empire:  Sarah Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy Ring (Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2018), Gregory J. Wallance ’70 tells the true story of a bold young woman, the daughter of Romanian-born Jewish settlers in Palestine, who became the daring leader of a Middle East spy ring during World War I. Operating behind enemy lines, Aaronsohn and her spies furnished vital information to British Intelligence in Cairo about the Turkish military forces until she was caught and tortured by the Turks in the fall of 1917. The book rebukes the Hollywood stereotype of women spies as femme fatales and is at once an espionage thriller and a Joan of Arc tale.