A British historian has the eerie experience of reading the secret file kept on him by the Stasi, the East German secret police, and meeting with those who informed on him and the police who were responsible. After the unification of Germany, the government made the unprecedented decision to open the secret police records to every person who is in them. It was an appallingly comprehensive archive. Ash (History/Oxford; The Polish Revolution, 1984) states that one out of every fifty adult East Germans had a direct connection with the secret police. The Stasi tracked him from the time that he first crossed the border as a young student. His file was 325 pages and included copies of his notes, photographed during a secret search of his luggage, and even copies of references written by his Oxford tutors. Those who informed on him included ``Michaela,'' who was also informing on her own stepdaughter; ``Schuldt,'' a middle-aged lecturer who made homosexual advances to his students; ``Doktor,'' an Englishman who was told falsely that he was suspected of being a Western spy; and a once-brave woman, a Communist who had set out ``to fight for a better world'' and ended as an informer. His confrontations with these figures are difficult (some are abashed, some defiant), fascinating, but rarely satisfying for Ash. He fares little better with the police he tracks down, including a ``perfect textbook example of the petty bureaucratic executor of evil'' and an unrepentant colonel, reeking of ``alcohol, cigarette smoke, boredom and emptiness.'' Few it seems, can face what they have done. In the files, writes Ash, is ``a vast anthology of human weakness,'' reflecting less deliberate dishonesty ``than our almost infinite capacity for self-deception.'' Sensitive, subtle, and illuminating, as a fine historian explores those infinitely complicated choices made by human beings confronted by the issue of collaboration or resistance. (First serial to the New Yorker; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45574-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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