In 1941, Jewish American writer and avant-garde icon Gertrude Stein embarked on one of the strangest intellectual projects of her life: translating for an American audience the speeches of Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of state for the collaborationist Vichy government. From 1941 to 1943, Stein translated thirty-two speeches in which Pétain outlines the Vichy policy barring Jews and other "foreign elements" from the public sphere and calls for France...