For more than a decade, a harsh Congressional immigration policy kept most Jewish refugees out of America, even as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. In 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt finally created the War Refugee Board, and put a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle in charge. Over the next 20 months, Pehle pulled together a team of D.C. pencil pushers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across a dozen countries. As Rebecca Erbelding recounts in this National Jewish Book Award winner, this motley crew forged identity papers, recruited spies, leaked news stories, negotiated ransoms, and helped Jewish refugees escape to Palestine, covertly striking a blow at the Third Reich.