A lucid account of a spectacular if disheartening success story.
A history of the “stunning turn of events” that led to Hitler’s dictatorship.
That flamboyant men whom no one takes seriously become national leaders no longer surprises anyone, but Hitler’s rise shocked everyone, and Range’s lively addition to the groaning bookshelves on the Führer describes the critical years from 1919 to 1933. In 1919, a penniless immigrant from Austria but already a World War I veteran and fierce German nationalist, Hitler attended a meeting of the German Workers’ Party, a tiny Munich group whose extreme views appealed to him. He joined, and his dazzling oratory quickly made him the party’s leader and a Munich celebrity. By 1923, his party (now with “national socialist” added to its name) numbered over 50,000, and he launched his famous beer hall “putsch,” which failed but produced a great deal of publicity. Released from prison at the end of 1924, he resumed party leadership. For the remainder of the relatively prosperous 1920s, Nazis remained a negligible political force, but Hitler’s fierce anti-government, racist rhetoric kept them in the news. Matters changed when the Depression crushed Germany’s economy. To worldwide amazement, the Nazis received 6.4 million votes in the 1930 election (eight times their 1928 total) and over 100 seats in the Reichstag. Their vote doubled again in 1932. Germany’s leaders could no longer ignore the nation’s largest political party, but Hitler refused any government position except chancellor. Finally, after nearly a year of national paralysis, conservative figures convinced themselves that they could control Hitler from subordinate positions in the cabinet, and he took office on Jan. 30, 1933. Every reader beginning this lucid, provocative history will want to know how such a fringe character with views abhorrent to educated citizens could become a national leader. Range provides the answer: persistence, luck, and an ignorant establishment—all qualities as common today as a century ago.
A lucid account of a spectacular if disheartening success story. (8-page b/w insert; map; timeline; cast of characters)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-43512-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A boon for admirers of Oz’s work and contemporary Israeli literature in general.
A moving, emotionally charged memoir of the renowned author’s youth in a newly created Israel.
“Almost everyone in Jerusalem in those days,” writes novelist Oz (The Same Sea, 2001, etc.) of the 1940s, “was either a poet or a writer or a researcher or a thinker or a scholar or a world reformer.” Oz’s uncle Joseph Klausner, for instance, kept a 25,000-volume library in every conceivable language, its dusty volumes providing a madeleine for the young writer, “the smell of a silent, secluded life devoted to scholarship,” even as his grandmother contemplated the dusty air of the Levant and concluded that the region was full of germs, whence “a thick cloud of disinfecting spirit, soaps, creams, sprays, baits, insecticides, and powder always hung in the air.” His own father had to sell his beloved books in order to buy food when money was short, though he often returned with more books. (“My mother forgave him, and so did I, because I hardly ever felt like eating anything except sweetcorn and icecream.”) Out in the street, Oz meets a young Palestinian woman who is determined to write great poems in French and English; cats bear such names as Schopenhauer and Chopin; the walls of the city ring with music and learned debate. But then there is the dark side: the war of 1948, with its Arab Legion snipers and stray shells, its heaps of dead new emigrants fresh from the Holocaust. “In Nehemiah Street,” writes Oz, “once there was a bookbinder who had a nervous breakdown, and he went out on his balcony and screamed, Jews, help, hurry, soon they’ll burn us all.” In this heady, dangerous atmosphere, torn by sectarian politics and the constant threat of terror, Oz comes of age, blossoming as a man of letters even as the bookish people of his youth begin to disappear one by one.
A boon for admirers of Oz’s work and contemporary Israeli literature in general.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-15-100878-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.
A history of the right to vote in America.
Since the nation’s founding, many Americans have been uneasy about democracy. Law and policy expert Waldman (The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014, etc.), president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, offers a compelling—and disheartening—history of voting in America, from provisions of the Constitution to current debates about voting rights and campaign financing. In the Colonies, only white male property holders could vote and did so in public, by voice. With bribery and intimidation rampant, few made the effort. After the Revolution, many states eliminated property requirements so that men over 21 who had served in the militia could vote. But leaving voting rules to the states disturbed some lawmakers, inciting a clash between those who wanted to restrict voting and those “who sought greater democracy.” That clash fueled future debates about allowing freed slaves, immigrants, and, eventually, women to vote. In 1878, one leading intellectual railed against universal suffrage, fearing rule by “an ignorant proletariat and a half-taught plutocracy.” Voting corruption persisted in the 19th century, when adoption of the secret ballot “made it easier to stuff the ballot box” by adding “as many new votes as proved necessary.” Southern states enacted disenfranchising measures, undermining the 15th Amendment. Waldman traces the campaign for women’s suffrage; the Supreme Court’s dismal record on voting issues (including Citizens United); and the contentious fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “became a touchstone of consensus between Democrats and Republicans” and was reauthorized four times before the Supreme Court “eviscerated it in 2013.” Despite increased access to voting, over the years, turnout has fallen precipitously, and “entrenched groups, fearing change, have…tried to reduce the opportunity for political participation and power.” Waldman urges citizens to find a way to celebrate democracy and reinvigorate political engagement for all.
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1648-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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