A Hitler biography unlikely to be surpassed for quite some time.
An expert on Nazi Germany delivers a massive new biography of arguably the most monstrous leader in history.
Longerich (Modern German History/Royal Holloway Univ. of London; Goebbels: A Biography, 2015, etc.) addresses the many biographies that have come before, notably by Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest, which tend to characterize Hitler as a loner and an outsider, a “nonperson.” In contrast, Longerich examines Hitler’s “autonomous role as an active politician” in shaping the policies of his party. “I argue…that critical turning points in Hitler’s policies cannot be seen as the result of external constraints and structural determinants but were the product of decisions he forced through in the face of resistance and significant retarding factors,” writes the author. After Hitler’s first three nondescript decades, the post–World War I depression gave way to fury and rage at the German defeat, and he found expression as a propagandist for the extreme right-wing German Workers’ Party. Emerging a “magnificent failure” from his botched putsch, trial, and imprisonment, he set about creating a public image and political program with Mein Kampf, articulating especially his anti-Semitism and the conquest of “living space” in Eastern Europe. Although he was appointed chancellor in January 1933, his party, writes Longerich, “still had no more than one-third of the electorate behind it,” and it took “great political skill” over the next 18 months to transform the government into a Hitler dictatorship. The author deftly shows how Hitler actively “steered the course of events”—e.g., neutralizing the left, removing basic rights, eliminating trade unions, asserting total Nazi control of all clubs and associations, and “sorting out” the role of the two churches. As the momentum of terror grew, so did the inner conflicts and inconsistencies. Yet these did not undermine Hitler’s rule; on the contrary, the often cited “chaos of offices,” the author notes, “strengthened his personal position” and “allowed him…to enforce his political will directly as an autocratic dictator.” Throughout, the author wears his impeccable scholarship lightly, creating a fresh picture of one of history’s most written-about subjects.
A Hitler biography unlikely to be surpassed for quite some time.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-19-005673-5
Page Count: 912
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
