A welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.
A new history of the Bund, an “idealistic group of Germans who, in a small way, did something remarkable.”
After the fall of the Third Reich, many Germans zealously asserted that they had never sympathized with the fascist regime; indeed, there were those few who truly resisted the scourge and even tried to rescue its victims. This history chronicles the significant contributions of one group, the Bund. Roseman (Director, Jewish Studies/Indiana Univ., The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, 2002, etc.), an award-winning historian of Nazi Germany, tells of a small group of leftist idealists that was established in the days of the Weimar Republic to improve humanity with lectures, exercise, pamphlets, and dance performances. Called simply the Bund, its “inspirational leader” was Artur Jacobs, who possessed “boundless optimism and self-confidence.” He was not Jewish, but his wife was. After the mob outrages against German Jews on Kristallnacht, members of the Bund, even under the watchful eyes of the brown-shirted offenders, offered succor and sympathy, fruit and flowers to those eventually headed to the concentration camps. They also supplied lifesaving Bund houses for some Jews. Providing help was exceedingly difficult. Relatives of some of the group’s adherents were in the Wehrmacht, there were constant and devastating air raids in the Ruhr homeland of the Bund, and rations were scarce. Not surprisingly, after the Allied victory in Europe, when reparations became available to proven victims of the Third Reich, Bundists, including Jacobs, lined up. Recounting their considerable trials, many, including Jacobs, exaggerated their wartime exploits and their suffering. With meticulous research into personal papers and other primary material, Roseman provides a singular footnote to the story of life in Hitler’s Germany. Reflecting on the story of the Bund, readers may ask again: “What would I have done?”
A welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62779-787-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
HISTORY | HOLOCAUST | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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