A deeply researched work that passionately challenges the popular myth that “the German people followed Hitler as if as one...
Stirring portraits of a motley assortment of unlikely heroes in the fight against the Nazis.
Recently deceased investigative reporter and author Thomas and documentary filmmaker and journalist Lewis (co-authors: Shadow Warriors of World War II: The Daring Women of the OSS and SOE, 2017) plunge readers directly into the action, offering an entertaining account of the diverse group of people who managed to subvert the Nazi intentions in some way. The authors move chronologically, from Hitler’s assumption of the chancellorship in early 1933 and the first demonstrations of brutal Nazi tactics to the cataclysmic end of the war. The public burning of books alarmed American-born academic Mildred Fish-Harnack, who was married to a senior German economics official, Arvid Harnack. With her friends, they galvanized sympathetic colleagues against the regime, providing secrets to the Americans and to the Soviets in the form of the Rote Kapelle group. The authors note that 45 people connected to that group were “sentenced to death,” and Mildred was “the first and only American woman executed on the order of Hitler.” Within the official Nazi apparatus, Gen. Hans Oster was working against the grain, with ambivalent Adm. Wilhelm Canaris looking the other way. In a very strange case, Kurt Gerstein reluctantly joined the SS and became one of the first to reveal the horrific inner workings of the concentration camps. Most poignantly, the authors delineate the courageous work of the young Munich students Hans and Sophie Scholl and others, whose White Rose group prevailed at least for a short time. The authors also recount the valiant, failed attempt by the group led by Col. Henning von Tresckow and Col. Claus von Stauffenberg to assassinate Hitler. All paid dearly for their brave defiance.
A deeply researched work that passionately challenges the popular myth that “the German people followed Hitler as if as one mass, mesmerized like the children of Hamelin by the Pied Piper.”Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-48904-3
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
The author brings the case for judicial redress before the court of public opinion.
A former Justice Department lawyer, who now devotes her private practice to federal appeals, dissects some of the most politically contentious prosecutions of the last 15 years.
Powell assembles a stunning argument for the old adage, “nothing succeeds like failure,” as she traces the careers of a group of prosecutors who were part of the Enron Task Force. The Supreme Court overturned their most dramatic court victories, and some were even accused of systematic prosecutorial misconduct. Yet former task force members such as Kathryn Ruemmler, Matthew Friedrich and Andrew Weissman continued to climb upward through the ranks and currently hold high positions in the Justice Department, FBI and even the White House. Powell took up the appeal of a Merrill Lynch employee who was convicted in one of the subsidiary Enron cases, fighting for six years to clear his name. The pattern of abuse she found was repeated in other cases brought by the task force. Prosecutors of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen pieced together parts of different statutes to concoct a crime and eliminated criminal intent from the jury instructions, which required the Supreme Court to reverse the Andersen conviction 9-0; the company was forcibly closed with the loss of 85,000 jobs. In the corruption trial of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a key witness was intimidated into presenting false testimony, and as in the Merrill Lynch case, the prosecutors concealed exculpatory evidence from the defense, a violation of due process under the Supreme court’s 1963 Brady v. Marylanddecision. Stevens’ conviction, which led to a narrow loss in his 2008 re-election campaign and impacted the majority makeup of the Senate, seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back; the presiding judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate abuses. Confronted with the need to clean house as he came into office, writes Powell, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to take action.
The author brings the case for judicial redress before the court of public opinion.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61254-149-5
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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