Thomas Mann Books

As a little boy Emile Sinclair feels that life is divided into a world of light and a world of dark. Emile meets Max Demian, an older self-assured boy who seems to know much about life. While Demian does not dominate Sinclair, the younger boy falls increasingly under the influence of the older youth. The novel follows Sinclair's development through through childhood to adolescent rebellion to young adulthood. It plots Sinclair's evolving thought from unorthodox religion to philosophical mysticism and on towards self-awareness.

This book was published in 1919, just after World War 1. It shows the influence of the great ferment of thought that occurred at turn of the twentieth century and which resulted in various mystical movements such as theosophy and Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy. Most of all, the book seems to show the influence of the then new psychology of Carl Jung, including Jung's interest in psychic phenomena. The novel is increasingly didactic as Sinclair delves deeper into mysticism, philosophy and psychology and as a result will be of less interest to those interested in stories of human interaction and events. This is not to say that 'nothing happens' in the novel, even in the second half, but long 'teaching' speeches occupy much of this second half of the book. As someone interested in Jungian psychology I found this book fascinating, but almost 100 years on I am left wondering did the 'grand new man' really emerge or are we still clinging to the "heard instinct" so accurately described in ?

As a little boy Emile Sinclair feels that life is divided into a world of light and a world of dark. Emile meets Max Demian, an older self-assured boy who seems to know much about life. While Demian does not dominate Sinclair, the younger boy falls increasingly under the influence of the older youth. The novel follows Sinclair's development through through childhood to adolescent rebellion to young adulthood. It plots Sinclair's evolving thought from unorthodox religion to philosophical mysticism and on towards self-awareness.

This book was published in 1919, just after World War 1. It shows the influence of the great ferment of thought that occurred at turn of the twentieth century and which resulted in various mystical movements such as theosophy and Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy. Most of all, the book seems to show the influence of the then new psychology of Carl Jung, including Jung's interest in psychic phenomena. The novel is increasingly didactic as Sinclair delves deeper into mysticism, philosophy and psychology and as a result will be of less interest to those interested in stories of human interaction and events. This is not to say that 'nothing happens' in the novel, even in the second half, but long 'teaching' speeches occupy much of this second half of the book. As someone interested in Jungian psychology I found this book fascinating, but almost 100 years on I am left wondering did the 'grand new man' really emerge or are we still clinging to the "heard instinct" so accurately described in ?

Esta coleccion incluye las tres novelas que ganaron de autores que ganaron el premio nobel: Knut Hamsun (1920) El juego de la vida, Sigrid Undset (1928) Tristan, y Thomas Mann (1929) Edad Feliz

Frau Thomas Mann, nee Katia Pringsheim, was an intelligent and energetic woman who gave the famous author 6 children and her full attention as a manager and major-domo of the household. "I never in my life did what I really wanted to do" she protests, at the beginning of the memoir. And one thing she did not want to do was write a "tell all" autobiography and be a "veuve abusive" or a toxic widow, one who tells all and sullies the reputation of a late husband. But she is so reticent, that it takes the urging of her family to finally put on paper some of the interesting events in her long marriage to the Nobel Prize-winning author.

Katia Pringsheim was a highly intelligent child, daughter to a university professor in Munich. She was so bright that her parents arranged for her to be privately tutored for high school--sadly, before World War I, girls were not admitted to German "gymnasium" or high school college preparatory schools. She enjoyed the tutoring of some rather famous instructors (Roentgen, the physicist, for one.) She qualified for the Abitur or university entrance. But as life would have it for many women, she married, and children and care for a husband became her occupation. She doesn't regret this entirely--she took on the role of manager of the quickly-growing Mann family, and her quick intelligence and practical side helped to get the Manns through some dangerous times, first World War I, then even more dangerous, World War II. All through the turmoil of moving from Germany to Switzerland, to the US, back to Switzerland, Frau Doktor Mann kept a watchful eye over the publishers, and ran the business side of the author's work.

She tells less than one would like about her feelings during many traumatic or exciting events, but there are interesting if somewhat sketchy details on the models for famous characters in Mann's novels. For example, a very good friend, Gerhart Hauptmann, had a way of speaking in broken, incomplete sentences and thoughts. He became Pieter Pieperkorn, the kingly but incoherent Dionysian figure in "Magic Mountain." While Frau Mann claims not every famous character had a real-life counterpart, she is able to source many of the characters Mann created, showing what physical or idiosyncratic portions he borrowed to put in his novels. This makes the memoir fascinating reading, as does a small but biting portrait of Alma Mahler and other luminaries of the early 20th Century such as Schoenberg, Brecht, Einstein, and Chaplin. For these sketches alone, this is must-reading for anyone interested in Thomas Mann.

a total picture of the cold and bitter fighting with pictures included. Comprhensive while still remaining a good read with an easy understanding of a sometimes complex situation.

Having recently returned from Norway I was interested in how the Norweigians repelled the Nazis. The book detailed the information I was seeking. Amazon found the title for me, and made delivery in a very timely manner.

Hitler's Arctic War is a useful introduction to that theater of WWII. The book starts by covering the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939. Although this seems odd, given the title, it makes sense since strategically that war was important for later actions in Scandinavia. Next, the invasion of Norway is fairly well-covered, although without a lot of detail.

The German/Finn invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 is covered in much more detail. Included is a chapter on the naval convoys to send Lend-Lease material to the USSR via the arctic port of Murmansk. This is very interesting stuff, and is a topic that is only lightly addressed elsewhere. This is probably the main contribution of the book. The Soviet (re)invasion of Finnland in 1944 is also covered in solid fashion. Glantz provides more detail in his Battle for Leningrad, but this book will do if you just want the general overview and highlights of the battle. The book concludes with by examining covert operations and commando raids in Norway during the war.

If you are looking for an exhaustive source on WWII in Scandinavia, this is not for you. If you're looking for a solid introduction to the topic, this book will do nicely.

I was surprised when I read this book, at the number of errors, inaccuracies, and untruths I found in it. It is painfully apparent that no one with any knowledge of that theater checked this book before it was published.

I also had a problem with reading it. It felt like the authors each wrote what they wanted, and didn't bother to compare their efforts before putting them together. There is nothing wrong with reinforcing information in previous chapters. Telling it to the reader again, though, is a different matter.

I ordered this book to aid my own research into the campaigns in the North. I kept it only as a reminder of what not to publish. I was sorely disappointed with this product.

This is a picture book covering all aspects of the Northern Campaign including the 1939 Russo-Finnish War, the 1940 invasion of Norway, the campaigns in Finland and Karelia from 1941-1944, and all aspects of the naval war in the Barents and Arctic over the same period. As a history of the events and campaigns, this is little more than a brief overview. The topics are so broad and the text so short that only the merest overview is given. All of the information can be found elsewhere, there is virtually nothing new. If you want to know anything about any of the campaigns nominally covered in this work, I strongly recommend that you find other books that are better written and more narrowly focused (such as Trotter's book on the 1939 Winter War or Ziemke's book if you are interested in the Karelia). There are lots of great (and rare) photos in this book, but little more. One thing that really annoyed me about this book was that the authors openly present a strong pro-Soviet bias. This is unacceptable in a scholarly historical publication by two professional historians (both have Ph.D.s). This should have been written with more balance, I can only conclude that this is not a serious work. My rating of three stars is, I believe, generous and I would not disagree with anyone who gave it two. This is a picture book of the Arctic war, and if you are looking for more than this, you will disappointed by this volume. Not recommended for a serious student of the era.

The book arrived on time, and was in good condition. The inside had no markings, but the covered had some dings in it.

The text was torn. The cover was horrible and it had so much writing in it. It was the wrong text. I typed the IBSN, why would that book show up. I was very disappointed in this purchase.

Well written book that provides a good introduction into business law principles. Outlines complex concepts with case law that makes it easy to understand. A reccomended read for the pre-law students as well as a valuable reference for business owners.

I must beg to differ with my colleague in academia.

If it is sophomoric to assume that an author's life is completely mirrored in his novels, than it is the greater fool's error to believe that there is such a thing as an objective biography -- compiled from some sort of secret correspondence, some sort of puzzle contained in the actions of author's life, which will englighten a literary work further.

Kurzke respects a profound idea in his work: Mann wished to remembered by his fiction, and those letters which amplify his career.

Frankly, Thomas Mann is a figure in world literature who respected the idea of leaving for posterity exactly what he wished to said about him. Apparently, this is insufficient to repeat. It seems better to do what Joseph Frank did with his five volume Dostoevsky biography (everyone applauds this biography) -- to pour over the notes and sketches of rough drafts, as well as his surly day-to-day complaints about neighbors and his hemorrhoids. Frank admonishes Anna Dostoevskaya for trying to etch out and destroy parts of the notebooks that she did not wish to be public. Mann obviously succeeded in protecting himself from vulture professors and writers who would years down the road be searching for material to publish to advance their curriculum vitae.

As Settembrini might have said, a fixation on the concrete banal and prosaic facts about an author's life is an (intellectual) disease typical of the century just past. Kurzke's attitude and approach share nothing of this.

I have been a long-time admirer of the novels of Thomas Mann. I read "Buddenbrooks" in one go--never looking up from the pages while my roommate in college was convinced I'd gone crazy. But I'd never read a better novel. And to think, Mann wrote that as a youth of 24! Later, I read "The Magic Mountain" and my admiration only increased.

This is a more literary biography--not a chronological story of a life, but the excerpts of a life as influence in art. I found a lot to ponder about; Mann lived a life of denial as one who was homosexual in nature but decided, consciously, to suppress the expression of it. Yet of course, sexuality comes out in art, and Mann himself described much of his work as sensuous, including the ponderous "Magic Mountain." We learn who was the original Pribislav Hippe, the "Khirgiz-eyed" student upon whom the young Hans Castorp has a schoolyard crush. Typical of Mann, the initial love object (Pribislav) is transmuted into an "acceptable" (but barely) female love, the married and undisciplined Clavdia. Likewise in "Tonio Kroeger", Tonio first talks about his love for Hans Hansen (whom we learn has am actual counterpart as well)and this is quickly converted into a puzzling love for Ingeborg Holm, with whom Tonio barely exchanges a sentence.

But, curiousity aside, there is a lot of literary interest here; the notiion that "Dr. Faustus" was thought to be the literary complement to Hesse's "Glass Bead Game," something I thought of immediately when I read "Dr. Faustus." There are also tidbits about the author that give a lot of insight into his methods and psyche; he possessed a pair of opera glasses, and time and again, either he writes in his diary about observing someone, or it is even noticed that Mann is peering out the window and gazing intently at someone who later turns up in exquisite detail, mannerisms and all, as a character. There are also some short but telling vignettes about each of Mann's six children, troubled, talented, loved or scorned. And quite a bit about Katia, the beautiful and brilliant woman he married. And a bit about his reconcilation with older brother Heinrich.

The most important revelation about Mann's work, however, I think is to be found in "Death in Venice." Mann remarks that von Aschenbach's success was due to his ability to concentrate, for years at a time, and continue to add and polish his work. This is Mann's secret--the book commands its own time and length and the author serves the Muse.

For decades, fans of Thomas Mann have been waiting for a definitive biography, frustrated by the fact that Mann's will sealed all his private papers after his death. Unfortunately, we must continue our wait.

Herman Kurzke's Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art, A Biography, is a hoax, for it simply is not a biography. The book is instead nearly 600 pages of literacy criticism, and sophomoric literary criticism at that. Kurzke makes the classic undergraduate error of assuming that the artist's work perfectly mirrors his life and that the artist is his characters. Again and again Kurzke strives--and fails--to provide insight into the life of Mann merely by delving into Mann's writing. Consider this passage from page 73: "Thomas Mann's favorite flower was the Marshall Niel rose. He 'is' [Little Herr] Friedemann, the reading and violin-playing ascetic who has succeeded in chaining up the dogs in the cellar. The basic motif for his life and actions is fear of passion, fear that the carefully tended equilibrium of his life could tip over, fear of the return of what was repressed and the collapse of true construction of art. The psycholoanalyst Krowkowski in The Magic Mountain knows with pleasure how to make it perfectly clear." So we learn what Mann's favorite flower was, but nothing more, and the unmistakable tone of undergraduate assertion here makes us shudder.

The absolute dearth of information about Mann is inexcusable, and those who are familiar with Mann's works, as certainly all who would buy this book must be, do not need someone of Kurzke's limited skills to tell us what those works are about. One need only read "Death in Venice," for example, to know it is about suppressed homosexuality, and one need only read Mann's 1918-1939 published diaries (1982) to know that Mann is addressing his own suppressed (or not) sexual inclinations.

In sum, this book is a waste of time, ....

Peter Gay has taken three lectures and turned them into Savage Reprisals. Each of these essays looks at a different novel from the realist genre of the nineteenth century from three different countries; Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks. The essays are connected by the Peter Gay's examination of the usefulness of these books to historians and by the authors of these novels' anger against their society and the revenge they take against it within their novels. It is easy to see how these essays were brought to life as lectures but they work quite effectively as written works as well. This book will even be of interest to those who have not read the particular novels in question. The epilogue is the crowning achievment of the book and well worth the price of admission. A short, quick, fun spin through the world of novelists, historians and the nineteenth century.

Peter Gay has over the past five decades gotten a reputation as a leading moderate liberal historian, writing on Voltaire, the Enlightenment, Freud and the sexual life of the 19th century middle class. He has shown himself as a moderate, common-sense historian with Freudian interests. This book, part of the Norton Lecture Series, asks to what extent is great literature reliable history? He looks at three major realist masterpieces: "Bleak House," "Madame Bovary" and "Buddenbrooks". Why these three were chosen, instead of, say "Middlemarch," "The Sentimental Education," or "The Maias," is never made clear. Nevertheless by looking at the pyschological problems of Dickens, Flaubert and Mann, he gives a negative verdict for the first two and a more positive one for Mann. He then spends a conclusion arguing against postmodernist nihilism and then praises "The Autumn of the Patriarch."

Unfortunately, this book does not do much credit to either Gay's critical skills or his historical abilities. Indeed, it confirms the worst opinions of European liberalism as being too unimaginative to appreciate the extremes of human behavior. Gay also uses Freudian theory in its most unimaginative way, as a simplistic supporter of order who reduces all differences to someone's abnormality. For a start, Gay's understanding of the books is not all that firm. His discussion of "Bleak House" starts with the death of the non-existent character Richard Carstairs, whom he has confused with Richard Carstone. Miss Flite does not expect an imminent judgement in her endless Chancery case; in fact she confuses judgement with the Final Judgement. It is not quite true that Mrs. Snagsby thinks her husband is having an affair; she actually thinks, utterly wrongly, that Jo is his illegitimate son. Flaubert does not jump in one famous passage from 1848 to 1867, but from 1851 to 1867. The gap, from the beginning of the Second French Republic to its end, is not a minor one, either historically or in the novel. It would be mistaking a gap in American novel from 1861 to 1880, when it is actually starts from 1865.

A more serious problem is Gay's superficiality. Given the revolution in literary criticism over the past three decades it is somewhat alarming to have Gay believe that Marxist criticism ends with George Lukacs. He is prone to making sweeping statements about Dickens, such as that Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild are merely caricatures, or that Leigh Hunt wasn't really like Harold Skimpole, or that the portraits of mothers are mere lampoons. There is no evidence or argument to support these statements: just flat assertion. There is a certain psychological superficiality as well. There is an interesting discussion of Esther Summerson's and Agnes Wickfield's excessive virtue arising out of extreme guilt. But Gay ignores the fact that of the unambiguously middle-class characters in "Bleak House", almost all are horrible parents. Mrs. Guppy is merely silly and Mrs. Woodcourt slightly foolish in her Welsh nostalgia. But Skimpole, Turveydrop, Smallweed, Mrs. Jellby and Mrs. Pardiggle are uniformly repulsive. Vholes incessantly mentions his daughter and father to justify his vampiric behavior, Carstone's foolishness kills himself before his son is even born, while Mrs. Chadband is a cold surrogate mother to Esther. Ironically the one middle-class parent who truly loves her child had her out of wedlock. What would a Freudian analysis make of all this, or the distorted families of Clennam and Dorrit? But Gay has no interest.

Instead he sees Dickens governed by rage, personally irritated by the Law over an unsuccessful lawsuit, and somewhat suspicious of his mother (he does not point out that Skimpole is a more malevolent Micawber, and therefore a more malevolent version of Dickens' father). "For all his protestations to the contrary, Dickens's commitment to the Reality Principle was at best intermitten." he says patronizingly. His main complaint against Dickens is that he underestimated the reforming intentions of good liberals like Gay himself. It therefore rather severely undercuts his case that Gay says that the Second Reform Act of 1867 gave the vote to most men when, in fact, it did not. He also criticizes Dickens for ignoring reforms that were starting right when he writing the novel, as if their success was assured and didn't need Dickens' polemic. It certainly takes a certain lack of imagination to say that there were no Bounderbys, Vholes, Dedlocks, Barnacles, Mrs. Clennams, Podsnaps or Veneerings in Victorian England. Gay's discussion of Flaubert is little better, and views his anger at the bourgeoisie as phobic rage. Allowing for certain self-dramatizing moments on Flaubert's part, this strikes me as obtuse. The July Monarchy was a narrow, illiberal oligarchy, notwithstanding its "liberal" elite; the Second Empire started out as a bloody dictatorship before it ended in ignomious defeat. Here is a man who writes one of the masterpieces of world prose and instead of being honored by his country is put on trial for obscenity. A certain contempt and indignation is all too well deserved. In trying to refute Flaubert's picture of provincial Rouen, Gay notes that one man (out of 100,000) bought impressionist paintings. Well, this is certainly a step up from Abraham, who had to prove five good men so as not to have Sodom incinerated. Here one good man refutes "Madame Bovary."

Found this today at the annual library sale for $1 and now that I have read the reviews on Amazon I am anxious to read it.

Donald Prater has produced a highly detailed account of Thomas Mann's life. He remains an objective observer and paints a picture of the development of an often cold literary statesman who finds it difficult to form personal relationships. Prater does not dwell on the genesis of Mann's literary production despite his insistence that Mann was not principally a political writer but an artist. Instead he gives a long-winded account of Mann's travels throughout Europe and America, his departure from Nazi Germany and naturalisation in the USA. The latter section of the text is larded with references to meetings with his children and other literary figures in the USA which do little to aid the reading of Mann's major works of fiction. The author is at pains to justify Mann's behaviour after the Second World War and emphasise his disgust for Nazism and anti-Semitic thought. Despite being a detailed and carefully researched manuscript, he text is not an inspiring exploration of Mann's life and work and often verges on the tedious. It will be an invaluable companion to the research student who wishes to verify precise details in the history of Thomas Mann, but as a companion to the study of Mann's oeuvre it is not successful. A superior guide must always be TJ Reed's 'The Uses of Tradition' which, after 25 years, continues to be the best English Language companion to the life and works of Thomas Mann, providing intelligent interpretation and valuable insight into the biography of the writer.

Thomas Sowell is a pretty smart guy. It's unfortunate that he wastes his skills on reinforcing peoples' existing political opinions. Much of what he says in this book is right, but the new ideas it offers don't seem like they ought to change the political opinions of anyone who has thought much about racial politics. And the old but wise arguments are written in a style that seems designed to turn off anyone who isn't already a fan of Sowell's ideas.
He presents interesting evidence that the culture of black ghettos came from parts of Britain that were uncivilized at the time its bearers moved to the southern U.S. This is the kind of subject where it's virtually impossible for most readers to tell whether he's being objective or selecting evidence to fit his biases. More importantly, it's hard to tell why it matters. Some people pay lip service to the authenticity of black culture, but I find it hard to believe that the origins of the culture several centuries ago plays an important role in peoples' choice to adopt the culture.
One interesting aspect of Sowell's story is that the large migration from the rural south to the urban north after WWII did not result in the usual assimilation of the migrants into the culture of the area they moved to. How much of that was due to the number of migrants, to their culture, or to their race? Sowell ignores this subject.
Sowell's argument that western civilization was responsible for the nearly worldwide abolition of slavery seems mostly right, but I'm disturbed by his exaggerations. He misleads readers into thinking that the first abolitionists were western, but a quick web search told me that Cyrus the Great wanted to abolish slavery worldwide two millennia earlier.
There are several places in the book where he makes confident, unsupported assertions as if they were certain, when I doubt anyone has enough evidence to make anything better than a rough guess. For instance, he thinks George Washington couldn't have gotten a prohibition on slavery into the constitution without driving the south out of the union (plausible, but it depends on hard-to-verify assumptions about his powers of persuasion), and that slavery would have lasted longer without the union (a controversial enough claim that abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison seemed to reject it, claiming the north would be a better haven for runaway slaves if it seceded and repealed the Fugitive Slave Law). There are probably some leftists who unfairly attack Washington for failing to accomplish more than he could possibly accomplish, but I don't see signs that they get respect from anyone who would listen to Sowell.
I'm quite suspicious of Sowell's claim that Hitler's pretenses of having been provoked into military action were intended only to fool people in Germany. Even if people in other countries had enough information to know Hitler was lying, it's easy to imagine that a fair number of them were looking for a way to rationalize neutrality, and that Hitler was helping them to fool themselves.