A monumental biography that seeks to be the final word (at least for this century) on the subject. British historian Kershaw (Univ. of Sheffield) has spent an academic career thinking judiciously and writing clearly about Hitler, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany. This massive work, which will consist of two volumes, promises to be the most comprehensive biography of Hitler to date. And although the writing is clear and mercifully free of far-fetched theories attempting to fathom Hitler’s evil, it still takes some dedication to historical truth to finish such a work and realize that the story is only half told. This is epic history on a grand scale; from rural Austria and Vienna to Munich and cosmopolitan Berlin; from the battlefields of the Great War to the exaggerations of the beer hall; from Hitler’s rejection by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna to his election as chancellor of Germany. As narrative biography, Kershaw— account clearly portrays how Hitler evolved from a rejected artist to a political novice and then to messianic illusion. Besides the use of Goebbels’s diaries, recently discovered in Moscow, there is little that is new here; Kershaw’s achievement lies in his retelling the tale in greater detail and avoiding some of the more outlandish theories concerning Hitler. No one writing on Hitler, though, can avoid some attempt at explanation. Kershaw writes—and few would argue—that “the First World War made Hitler possible,” but goes on to argue against the interpretation that Hitler was somehow the logical outcome of German history’s “special path.” Kershaw’s Hitler is no —psychopathic god— but deeply rooted in the history and vulture of Vienna, the Great War, and German racial nationalism. Thus, what emerges is a fascinating dialectic between the socioeconomic causes of Hitler’s rise and the responsibility of the German people for his reign of terror. (32 pages b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1999
ISBN: 0-393-04671-0
Page Count: 875
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
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.
