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THE BERLIN MISSION

Name: THE BERLIN MISSION
Author: Richard Breitman
ISBN: 978-1-5417-4216-1

THE AMERICAN WHO RESISTED NAZI GERMANY FROM WITHIN

by Richard Breitman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2019

A vivid chronicle of 1930s Germany conveyed through the life of a lesser-known historical figure.

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The story of Raymond Geist (1885-1955), United States consul in Berlin from 1929 to 1939.

Breitman (Emeritus, History/American Univ.; co-author: FDR and the Jews, 2013, etc.) maintains convincingly that Geist was the most competent American diplomatic figure in Germany, especially after the Nazis took power in 1933. A professional actor and scholar (Harvard doctorate), he was overqualified in 1921 when he joined the Consular Service, at the time separate and inferior to the Diplomatic Service, concerned mostly with visa matters and problems of American citizens. During Geist’s assignment in Berlin, these duties became a matter of life and death. Few colleagues knew how to deal with the Nazis, and the ambassadors were callow political appointees. Far more educated, fluent in German, and a natural schmoozer, Geist became so valuable that superiors kept him in Berlin for a decade even though consuls usually rotated after a few years. Most scholars agree on the value of Geist’s reports to U.S. officials, in which he emphasized the Nazi regime’s brutality, predicted Hitler’s intention to go to war, and described the vicious persecution of Jews, warning that it would end in mass murder. He worked hard and often creatively to process the avalanche of requests for U.S. visas, but, a loyal civil servant, he obeyed America’s restrictive immigration laws. The sad truth is that most Americans, including members of Congress, overwhelmingly opposed admitting refugees, and many high officials in the State Department were anti-Semitic. Although sympathetic, Franklin Roosevelt refused to twist arms. “In the fiscal year from July 1, 1933, to June 30, 1934, 891 people got US immigration visas in Berlin,” writes Breitman. “This means that somewhere around twelve thousand people were either formally rejected or, more commonly, placed on the informal and inactive waiting list.” The author deplores this heartless policy, but he mostly praises Geist’s efforts, which were admirable but never heroic.

A vivid chronicle of 1930s Germany conveyed through the life of a lesser-known historical figure.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5417-4216-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
FDR AND THE JEWS
by Richard Breitman ; Allan J. Lichtman

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE
by Richard Breitman

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)