A gripping account of a nation’s experiment in democracy.
A vivid history of Germany after its defeat in World War I.
German journalist Jähner, author of Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, reminds readers that the 1918 surrender came as a terrible shock to a people largely untouched by the war whose distant army was retreating but still in good order. Most soldiers were happy to go home, but a minority enjoyed being “proud warriors” and despised the disorderly democracy that had replaced the Kaiser only slightly less than German communists, who were anxious to join the Bolshevik revolution in progress across the border. There followed several years of murderous instability, economic upheaval, and failed coups before Germany achieved a measure of stability. Communists and extreme-right parties joined the government. Both exerted a malign influence, hated democracy, and proclaimed that a government cabal had betrayed the nation in 1918. Despite this dismal landscape, the 1920s featured a golden age of art and a revolution in lifestyles. Readers seeking an overall history of this era should consult Eric D. Weitz’s Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. Jähner does not ignore politics, but mostly this is an outstanding cultural history. “The gender debates about LGBT+ are by no means an original development of the early twenty-first century; they had a massive prelude a hundred years ago,” writes the author, who also offers useful insights on literature, dancing, architecture and design, automobiles and city traffic, cinema, fashion, and even hairstyles. One dismal legacy of the Weimar era is hatred of the government, which, perhaps as a consequence, did not attract outstanding leaders. Jähner’s final chapters on the depression years reveal a democracy quietly dying. By 1933, the Nazis were Germany’s largest political party, and its takeover was peaceful and entirely legal.
A gripping account of a nation’s experiment in democracy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781541606203
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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