The Books Behind the Summer's Best Movies

Paul Rudd is best known for playing the goofball bro in comedies like I Love You, Man and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but he takes a serious turn in The Catcher Was a Spy (out June 22), a biopic about Moe Berg, a major-league catcher who had a secret life as a spy during World War II. In the film, he's recruited by the Office of Strategic Services to keep tabs on the German physicist Werner Heisenberg and stand ready to assassinate him. Nicholas Dawidoff's best-selling biography will burst the bubble of anybody hoping to meet a ballplayer–turned–James Bond. In truth, Berg's spy work was limited and modest. But, all the same, it's a lively read about a peculiar and fascinating figure who was both a powerhouse athlete and a serious intellectual who spoke at least a half-dozen languages. He once impressed the likes of Albert Einstein, who told him, "You will learn relativity faster than I will learn baseball."