An absorbing and well-documented history of postwar Germany.
An illuminating study of the decade following the defeat of the Third Reich.
In his engrossing first book, Jähner, the former editor of the Berlin Times, examines how and why Germany was capable of radically transforming from a sinister fascist mindset toward a modern democratic state. The author presents an expansive yet sharply probing overview of the period, reaching across political, social, and geographical spheres to draw a lucid portrait of a country reeling from the stark consequences of being on the losing side of a horrendous war. “The intention of this book,” writes the author, “has been to explain how the majority of Germans, for all their stubborn rejection of individual guilt, at the same time managed to rid themselves of the mentality that had made the Nazi regime possible.” Jähner chronicles the political events that transpired during the time period and weaves in personal stories from the correspondences of ordinary citizens and eyewitness accounts from noted writers such as Hannah Arendt that articulate the desperate spirit of the era. The author vividly describes the physical chaos impacting cities such as Dresden, Berlin, and Hamburg that were slowly trying to rebuild. As Jähner notes, “the war had left about 500 million cubic metres of rubble behind,” and he offer striking portraits of the grim realities faced by the millions of forced laborers and prisoners of war returning home to strained marriages and relationships. “Many marriages with the Heimkehrer [homecomer] husbands collapsed because each partner felt nothing but disdain for what the other had endured,” he writes. “It wasn’t just women who felt a lack of recognition, the men did too. Many soldiers only really grasped that they had lost the war when they returned to their families.” An immediate and long-lasting bestseller when it was published in Germany in 2019 and the winner of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, Jähner’s shrewdly balanced look at postwar Germany is sure to spark the interest of readers across the world.
An absorbing and well-documented history of postwar Germany.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31973-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
This is the edition that serious students of the Civil War, and Grant’s role in it, will want. Indispensable.
A new edition, with thorough commentary, of the memoirs of an American Caesar—and indeed, a book long reckoned to be America’s version of The Gallic Wars.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1855) began his military career without much promise but distinguished himself in combat in the Mexican-American War, where, as he recounts, he came into contact with many of his future opponents in the Civil War. His legendary service in the Western theater of operations, and later as commander of the entire Union Army, led to his election and re-election as president, but all that did not save him from being bilked by a business partner—and thus this memoir, which none other than Mark Twain convinced him to publish to provide for his soon-to-be-widow, since Grant was already ill with cancer. As editor Samet (English/West Point; No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post–9/11 America, 2014, etc.) notes, rumors immediately emerged that Twain had ghostwritten it. In fact, Grant labored endlessly on this massive book, which, writes Samet, “is the artifact that does justice to his achievement as the leader of an army that preserved a nation and emancipated four million people.” Grant’s writing is simple and unadorned, though those who read between the lines will see that he is nothing if not politically astute. His account of the political troubles of William Tecumseh Sherman for offering the same mercies as he had to the vanquished Confederate forces is a model of understatement—though, he adds, “the feeling against Sherman died out very rapidly, and it was not many weeks before he was restored to the fullest confidence of the American people.” If anything, Samet might be criticized, gently, for being too vigorous in annotation; an early disquisition on the French and Indian War, for instance, is orders of magnitude longer than the aside of Grant’s that prompted it, and it begs to be reined in. Nonetheless, for Civil War buffs, this is a must-read.
This is the edition that serious students of the Civil War, and Grant’s role in it, will want. Indispensable.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-244-0
Page Count: 1024
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Required reading for anyone interested in global affairs.
The author of authoritative books on Mao and Pol Pot returns with another impressive yet disturbing account of a dangerous world leader.
Events in Ukraine will spur sales of this thick biography, but any praise is well deserved, as Short offers an insightful and often discouraging text on the Russian president. Born in 1952 in Leningrad, he grew up in a tiny, shabby apartment shared with two other families. Entering the KGB in 1975, he left in 1991 to join Leningrad’s city government in the exhilarating aftermath of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Diligent and efficient, Putin rose to prominence and moved to Moscow in 1996, becoming President Boris Yeltsin’s trusted assistant and then successor in 2000. Russia’s constitution (approved under Yeltsin) gives its president far more powers than America’s, but Short shows how Putin’s KGB background lowered his inhibitions on imprisoning or murdering political opponents; as time passed, his word became law. The author has no quarrel with the accusation that Putin destroyed the democratic liberties that followed glasnost, but he also points out that, for most Russians, the 1990s were a time of crushing poverty, crime, and disorder. Early on under Putin, living standards increased, and the streets became safer. Few Russians admire the Soviet Union, other than its status as an empire and great power. Many Russians, including Putin, are angry about how the U.S. boasted of victory during the Cold War, gave advice but little else during the lean years, and broke its promise not to expand NATO to former Soviet nations, thereby stoking Russia’s long-standing paranoia about being surrounded by enemies. Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and backing of secessionists in eastern Ukraine remain popular, and many Russians support the invasion of Ukraine despite its difficulties. Having read obsessively and interviewed almost everyone, Putin included, Short delivers a consistently compelling account of Putin’s life so far. Contradictions abound, and the author is not shy about pointing out frank lies from sources that include Putin as well as his enemies.
Required reading for anyone interested in global affairs.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62779-366-7
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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