Mission to Mao – A Conversation with Sara Castro

AGS invites you to join us for a book talk conversation with Sara Castro, Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Air Force Academy,about her most recent book, Mission to Mao: US Intelligence and the Chinese Communists in World War II. The event will be hosted by Professor Jennifer Siegel as part of our History and International Security Series.

To register the for this event use the following link.

Sara Bush Castro is an Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where she has taught since 2019. She teaches courses on global and military history, national security history, East Asia, and China. She is also the President of the Society for Intelligence History, and she serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Castro was named a China Fellow at the Wilson Center in 2020. From 2016 to 2019, Castro served as the Associate Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) ICCAE program and as a teaching assistant professor in the Curriculum on Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill specializing in global security and intelligence history. She earned a doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2016, a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 2004, and undergraduate degrees from Arizona State University’s Honors College in 2000. Before becoming a professor, Castro worked as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. government.

Castro’s research focuses on the history of the Chinese Communist Party and the history of U.S.-China relations, especially through a lens of national security and intelligence. She wrote Mission to Mao: US Intelligence and the Chinese Communists in World War II, (Georgetown University Press, 2024), and she is a co-editor with Jadwiga Biskupska of Shots in the Dark: Experimentation, Success, and Failure in the Second World War (Fordham University Press, forthcoming in 2025). She has published in various journals, including The Journal of Military History, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and The Journal of Chinese Military History. (Airforce Academy)