Information and Intrigue: From Index Cards to Dewey Decimals to Alger Hiss

Focus on the efforts of Herbert Haviland Field who established an information service - Concilium Bibliographicum- that sent millions of index cards to American and European scientists. 

Contents: 

• Raising a perfectly modern Herbert
• An unexpected library revolution, at an unexpected place, by an unusual young fellow
• The great men at Harvard and Herbert's information "calling"
• Challenging the British "Lion" of science information
• New information ideas in Zurich, not Brooklyn or Paris
• Starting an information revolution and business, the hard way
• Big debts, big gamble, big building, big friends, a special librarian
• Lydia's other adventurous boy, family responsibilities, to America with hat in hand, war
• From information to intrigue, Herbert, WWI, a young Allen Dulles
• Returning to a family in decline, meeting with the liberal establishment
• To the centers of science and political power, and a new information world
• More conflicts between old and new science
• Wistar and the Council's abstracts vs. Field's elegant classification, round 1
• A Concilium without Herbert Field, Nina and the Rockefeller's great decisions
• A voyage home and the Council's vision for world science vs. the Concilium, round 2
• The information consequences of "capitalism's disaster" and the shift to applied science information
• The 1930's ideological journey of the Fields and their liberal friends
• Intrigue begins, in Switzerland, England, and Cambridge
• New loves, a family of agents, science information in war, librarians stealing books?, Soviet espionage without cost
• Looking forward to more intrigue, the postwar stories of big science, big information, and more ideology