The Bibliophile and the Spy

In 1962 New York attorney James Donovan personally escorted convicted Russian spy Rudolf Abel to the exchange that gave Abel his freedom in return for that of U-2 pilot Gary Powers and a second American. Donovan had served as Abel's defense attorney at his trial for espionage, and over a period of years the two developed a relationship such that Abel was moved, after returning to Russia, to send his American lawyer, whom he knew to be an avid book collector, an appropriate gift. In fact, he chose two seventeenth-century legal texts, each an imposing vellum-bound folio: Johannes Brunnemann's Commentarius in duodecim libros codicis Justinianei . . editio post claudicantem & mendosam Gallicanam quinta (Leipzig, 1688) and David Mevius' Jurisdictionis summi tribunali regii, quod est Vismariae . . . editio secunda (Frankfurt & Stralsund, 1675). Through the generosity of Donovan's daughter, her husband, Dr. Edward Amorosi, and their family, the two volumes are now part of Georgetown's collection and were the first items displayed in the new exhibit case on the renovated third floor.