Sara Castro is an Associate Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy and the author of Mission to Mao: US Intelligence and the Chinese Communists in World War II. The book chronicles the origins and fate of the first official contact between the U.S. government and the Chinese Communist Party: the so-called “Dixie Mission” to Yan’an by a small group of American military personnel, diplomats, and intelligence officers. Earlier in her career, Castro worked as an intelligen