Germany Books

Yes, this is the best book I have ever read.

There is something addictive about this little book, filled with seemingly dull, commercial postcards from Germany. The heft and compact size of it make you want to pick it up again and again and dream about the modern Europe of the 60's and 70's. No words get in the way. The images are of autobahns, health spas, restaurants, apartment buildings...and the overall effect of seeing these tidy, newly built spaces--without people--is somehow poignant, hopeful, serene and surreal. Often, geometric shapes dominate a landscape or visual field, and the postcard becomes a reduced, abstract scene which may or may not have been photographed on earth. "Boring" postcards is strangely fascinating!

A fascinating new look at personalities associated in one way or another with Hitlers Third Reich, this
time from the perspective and expertise of Charles Hamilton, the foremost authority on handwriting (and
the man who exposed the "Hitler Diaries" as fakes).
Each entry includes an incisive biographical sketch, usually with one or more good photos (many rare),
and perhaps most importantly for our purposes here, a sample of handwriting.
The entries are expanded for the more important figures, such as Frederick the Great and Hermann
Goering, and for Hitler himself not only a thorough graphological analysis (with special attention to
forgeries) but also a most interesting assessment of his art (again with attention to forgeries).
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Volume One includes Hitler and his inner circle, the women in Hitler's life (more than one might have
thought), all the leading Gauleiters and other functionaries, and prominent refugees from the Reich.
Volume Two contains studies of Hitler's art and the "degenerate" art he despised, Nazi military and
cultural leaders, cohorts and allies, war criminals, and the brave and doomed resistance leaders.

This top-quality work is highly recommended for history readers, collectors, students, and all others
interested in that outbreak of collective madness known as the Third Reich.

Just an note for quick clarification here: there are 2 volumes in this same-named set: Vol. 1 being published in 1984, and Vol. 2 a decade later in 1996. Autograph-collecting buffs of WWII personalities will really enjoy these books that provide almost 1,000 pages of facsimile autograph examples and photographs of some 900 Hitler apparachnicks (and a few of his opponents), along with their biographies. Vol. 1 consists of autograph examples of primarially NAZI-party leaders, their political toddies and enforcing henchmen, and the Gauleiter political lords of the captured countries. Vol. 2 consists of autograph examples of primarially German WWII military personalities, along with some foreign military and political officials; has two chapters devoted to German spies and cultural leaders, and a short chapter discussing the forgeries of Hitler documents and etchings. These books are printed on choice glossy paper, which provides sharp and clear photographs and excellent facsimile reproductions of autographed documents. The author provides nice pithy comments regarding the personality shortcomings for most of these individuals. [A companion book would be "Who's Who in Nazi Germany" for more detailed biographical details.]

Letters Home will be of interest to the history buff and especially to anyone who lived overseas in the years immediately after World War II.

The military family of the title is the Kales, stationed in Würzburg, four of whose seven children attended the Nürnberg (Area) American High School, located at 19 Tannenstrasse in Fürth. "Barby" Kale was one of four seniors in the first NHS graduating class, 1948. Don and Dick Kale were underclassmen. Herbert "Bub" Kale, graduated in the NHS class of 1949. The parents were Major Samuel S. Kale, the Displaced Persons Officer for the Unterfranken area, and Julia Kale.

All of the Kales wrote letters to their relatives back in New Jersey. Dad and Mom's letters are short, mostly personal, dealing with family matters. Barbie, Don, and Dick wrote only obligatory letters to their grandparents. Bub is the prolific letter writer. His letters are lengthy, filled with details, and reflect his many interests. His letters make this book historically significant.

Mark Falzini, son of Barbara (Kale) Falzini and a professional archivist, summarizes the historical backdrop for the letters in Part I of the book. His ten-page account of those first school days in a dependent school will be of interest to any Military Brat, whether from those early days or from the last days in the 90s.

He explains how the Kale children commuted between the town their parents lived in and the town where they went to high school, as did most of the high schoolers. Barby remembers her first dorm room in Erlangen. "There were two other girls that shared my room, and at about six o'clock in the morning, this little German man would come into our room and fix our stove--you know, stoke the coal so that it gets warmer. He used to bump my bed all the time. We had army cots with metal at the end." The families paid $2.00 per month for dormitory expenses. There was a monthly charge for meals, $1.00 per day. In Erlangen the boys ate Sunday dinner at the Kaiserhof. During dinner, a German would stroll among all the tables playing his violin. Some of the boys would put Jello on their spoons and flip them up, trying to get the jello into the chandeliers.

In the much longer Part II of the book, Falzini prints the actual letters, edited only for relevance. In an early letter, Bub gives us a candid portrait of his English teacher: "Miss Leamer is a whopper. She's pretty (etc) but her looks deceive you and she's bowlegged. She laid her cards on the table the first class she had. . . . [S]he told us her pet peeves--1) using pencil sharpeners, 2) forgetting anything, 3) not doing lessons and on and on. . . . She told us that she works all weeks always but on Fri & Sat she quits and goes out and has a swell time--no matter what. She scared us to death right away--but maybe we'll learn something."

In other letters, Bub tells of his bird watching (he later got a Ph.D. in orinthology), his work with the Boy Scouts in the displaced persons camps (he arranged for used Scout uniforms to be sent from the States for the Lithuanian Scouts), three family sightseeing trips (one to Belgium and the Netherlands, a second to Southern Germany and Austria, and a third to France), and much more.

After returning from Holland in the summer of 1947, Bub writes, "It [was] a relief to be out of Germany. You never know how much you dislike Germany until you leave it and go see one of its neighbors! In Holland you do not feel that depressing condition that prevails in Germany, where the people are just plain poor. They have virtually nothing and they stare at you all the time no matter how many times they have seen you. . . . The Germans pity themselves, they wonder why they are starving--and are almost always angry." No, the Germany the Kales experienced was not the Germany that many later residents and visitors remember.

Scholars will find Letters Home a valuable primary source. Many will find it valuable as validation of their time overseas as a Military Brat.

Mark Falzini, a noted and respected archivist with an expertise in the Lindbergh kidnapping case, has put into the public hands a valuable look at life in post-WWII Germany. "Letters Home" brings to view the lives of Americans living overseas during the years following the war, a glimpse of life rarely seen in other historical books and documents written about the era.

For any American who has lived in there, these letters home will bring back vivid memories of Germany, and a fresh outlook on what families of military members went through simply to create a life of normalcy.

Few books provide the slice of America Overseas that "Letters Home" does. For any history buff, this book is a must-have, providing eye witness accounts of a significant time in history.

At last, a text that depicts life in a concentration camp as experienced by a mosaic of those who lived it. Dr. Anne Grenn Saldinger's 108 page text, Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp, provides the teen-aged reader with a sense of the vastness of the Nazi concentration camp system. She includes a sidebar entitled "shattered teenage dreams" that describes the experience of those the same age as her young readers, thus allowing for maximum identification. Throughout, Dr. Grenn Saldinger connects these experiences to the lessons to be learned for today.

Details from a variety of survivor's videotaped histories or memoirs illustrate her narrative that explains how the Nazis implemented the "Final Solution," the Nazi euphemism for the genocide of the Jews. She begins with Nazi ideology that gave rise to the camp system. There is a short chapter describing the Jews' transition from ghetto to camp, a crucial step in the extermination process often omitted in Holocaust literature. Her young reader will learn important details such as Jews were not the only victims, prisoners had to wear triangles which colors represented the various persecuted groups, and that every inmate had to master unwritten rules of survival. The question of resistance is answered by presenting examples such as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the bombing of a crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau. She emphasizes that staying alive under the dehumanizing conditions also demonstrated active resistance against the Nazi determination to eradicate all Jewish life.

Dr. Grenn Saldinger describes the inhumane conditions clearly and vividly both by her descriptions and by survivor testimony. Her examples do not dwell on the revolting and are sometimes uplifting. For example, she cites the story of a Gypsy (one of the groups targeted for extinction by the Nazis) inmate who saved 16 Jewish children. These children lived to liberation thanks to the Gypsy boy's initiative. The appendix lists the major concentration and death camps followed by an abbreviated glossary of terms. Her suggestions for further reading include an annotated list of a dozen texts suitable for teenagers.

On the next to the last page, Dr. Grenn Saldinger includes the pledge against intolerance created by the World of Difference Institute of the Anti-Defamation League that enables the reader to recognize and declare "that respect for individual dignity, achieving equality, and opposing anti-Semitism, racism, ethnic bigotry, homophobia, or any other form of hatred is a non-negotiable responsibility of all people."

As a Holocaust educator, I have been looking for and finally found a text on this subject that won't exhaust my students. I highly recommend this book even if you are not a Holocaust educator. It includes virtually all of the relevant issues for today's youth studying the Holocaust.

The book does a good job in revealing a complete story of survival of the terrible conditions in the Nazi Concentration Camps. I feel that the target audience was those in the 7 - 9th grades. The book also has a very complete bibliography at the end. While focusing primarily on the plight of the Jews in the Camps, the book also brings out that millions of others were interned in the Camps for various reasons. The book also details the means by which Hitler's SS systematically exterminated millions of innocent victims. The author does subscribe to the very correct line of thought that we must all remember this atrocious crime against humanity so that it isn't repeated. This book would be a great book for anyone who would like to find out more about the Concentration Camps.

'Life on the Line' is still current even though it was written in the late 80's. It's challenge then and now is what do we do with Medical Ethics. This book challenges the reader to higher ideals than just sitting back and waiting for history to repeat itself!

This book has helped me to understand the horror of a Government's attitude causing euthanasia, murder, and medicalized killing of large groups of people. (Another great book to read along this line is "Death By Government" by R.J. Rummel) I pray we will all learn from the lessons of the past, before it is to late!!!

I purchased this book for my mother but had to give it a read as we lived in Wurzburg 1962-65 and just loved every minute, bite and drink. Ms Rowan painted an amazing picure through the eyes of a very young girl about difficulties living in that gorgeous town during very tough times. It is truely heartbreaking to think of the terror and destruction that so needlessly occurred when the war should have been over. The reconstruction is incredible. I remember so much rubble just on our street. She did great credit to her family and I want to thank her for sharing the memories. A great history book. Danke!

A great historical read from a German child's perspective during Nazi germany.

A major innovation in the area of travel books occurred in 1957 when Arthur Frommer introduced his "Europe On Five Dollars A Day." It was more than a practical guide to tourist sites and reasonable accommodations. The book served as an encouraging companion which showed the traveler how to be bold and adventurous without getting lost or going broke.

Over forty years later, author Rachel Kaplan offers the traveler a more intellectual and rewarding kind of travel experience through her book "Little-Known Museums in and Around Berlin" (she has written similar guides to Paris, London and Rome). Here Kaplan leads the traveler to 30 museums in Berlin and the surrounding countryside. Yet, it is Kaplan's grasp of the artistry to be found, her passion for the history evoked, and her love of the panoramic landscapes that captures one's imagination. The traveler is not only led on an adventure, but is shown intellectually and spiritually how to get to the most from it.

Kaplan's enthusiasm reaches such a peak that Germany's extraordinary artistic heritage in architecture, sculpture, painting and industrial design comes alive throughout the book. Highlights are: her descriptions of The Bauhaus Archive-Berlin Museum which pays tribute to a school of art and design that revolutionized twentieth-century design; The Film Museum-Potsdam containing Marlene Dietrich's dressing room for The Blue Angel; the New Synagogue Museum which was once partially destroyed by the Nazis but is now restored as a center for the fostering and preservation of Jewish culture. About this structure, Kaplan writes of a police officer who halted the Nazis at gun point in their quest to destroy it on Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938). This museum is now one of the city's most striking sights.

With each passage, Kaplan may well remind the reader of a special friend whose insights evoke new horizons and stir the emotions, in this case, for the cultural and political past and present of Berlin. The book's gorgeous illustrations include self-portraits of Kathe Kollowitz from the museum that bears her name; the sculpture "Solitude" from the Georg Kolbe Museum; and the statue of Martin Luther from Luther's Hall Wittenberg.

Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of the book is in how it rediscovers Berlin, a city so often associated only with the Third Reich and World War II. Kaplan's rich portrait is powered by the contrast between the ugliness of Hitler's reign and the beauty born through Germany's legendary artists and achievers who existed both before and after.

Having lived in London and traveled in Paris, I already owned Ms. Kaplan's entertaining and accesible guides to those two cities. Although no trip to Berlin is on the horizon, I bought her latest book, too, to indulge my wanderlust from an armchair. Beautifuly written and impeccably researched these guides take you on a trip through history, culture and politics to share the story behind how these unusual museums came to be. I can't wait to visit the Pickle Museum.

Went to germany and this book in 100% on the .....

Trust me on this. If your thinking about moving to germany then you will NEED this book

I have read several books on moving/living in Germany. Of those books, this one is the most comprehensive. It focuses on the nuts-and-bolts of the overseas move, including the various government agencies one must deal with, housing issues, utilities, and more. It's fairly upbeat but at the same time appears to provide a balanced view on the good and bad. Combined with "The Expert Expatriate," this book seems to cover all of the bases.

Beautiful, lovely, sexy and fascinating -- makes me want to do a little Spanish dancing and start an adventure.

The editorial blurbs give the basic facts of Lola's life, but what they cannot convey is the verve with which Bruce Seymour tells her tales. A prefatory note acknowledges the game show Jeopardy as enabling him to write the book thanks to his winnings. His four years were well spent. Seymour, therefore, is no ordinary scholar on the tenure track. As a lawyer, he brings skill in analyzing documents and developing contexts within which Lola and her conquests could act within and beyond the force of the law.

He has certainly done his research, but this book wears it lightly and elegantly. Elegance for a girl from Cork who in less globalized times of instant celebrity and social networking could pose as a Spaniard, dance her way into the wallets and beds of countless besotted swains, and then, once dumped or dumping, move on to her next conquest seemingly for decades little the worse, at least on the surface, for wear. Lightly, or so she seemed, over years of unpredictable liaisons within the turmoil of 1848 and a Europe that threatened to topple the monarchies within which Lola worked her machinations and maximized her share of the winnings.

While not the dour, earnest, or sharpish stereotype of the early feminist, nonetheless she pioneered the right of a woman to be heard and her power--in and out of the boudoir being formidable--to be taken seriously by those in quite influential positions of celebrity and/or acclaim themselves. Lola early perfected her ability to live by her quick study of her suitors, her rivals, and their relative positions vis-a-vis her own advantage. The blackberried and suited type-A CEOs finding and then shattering a glass ceiling in later years also may find that her life anticipates the troubles and the triumphs of being the first woman to successfully make into fact what Becky Sharp in Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" displayed in fiction. Lola certainly does remind you of a storybook tale, in all its complications, subplots, and, well, climaxes.

This is one of my favorite books. It shows how to chart a life and from it extrapolate directions that intersect, far off, with our own condition-- as a good biography should do. Lola was one of the first mass media phenomenons. She spurred the newspapers to promote her and they were only too eager to do so. Of course, this could backfire, but she does, in her later years, appear to have thrived from no publicity is bad publicity. Yet, nearer her death, repentance did occur, and she follows again the narrative arc of so many 18 and 19c fictional protagonists.

She managed to give as good as she got. The press pumped her up and cast her aside as both would sell papers. Her notoriety, carefully cultivated, managed to ensure that for much of the 19th century's middle decades, she would remain prominent, as much so at least as the nobles and royals with whom she connived and cavorted.

Many of those enjoying via MySpace or YouTube through their Warholian fifteen minutes of fame today have Lola to thank as their unwitting predecessor. Yet Seymour neither exaggerates or diminishes her impact. His thorough research into primary and secondary sources allows him to compare what she herself wrote about her life with what happened, or as much as can be known 150 years later. This book, taking on a woman so wrapped up in whipped-up scandal and calculated brazenness, clever self-defence and bold self-aggrandizing, is a notable feat. For those in her potential audience today less hungry for today's spotlights, Lola's story, naturally, is also a cautionary tale in the personal and financial costs of so much controversy and backstabbing and maneuvering, in a time when she, as a lone woman, dared to take on the establishment with wit, intelligence, and shrewdness.

I had to read this book for my German studies class (Women and Family in the 19th Century). This was the book that moved me the most, enraged me the most and made me think the most. This book not only covers many of the historical events of the 19th century (such as the Prussian War, Hep-Hep riots, and Ernst Haeckel), but it also covers feminism--or rather the repression of feminism that the main character, Agathe, experiences.

Although this book was written in the 19th century, this novel feels quite modern (and is a good translation) in the thought and concepts of feminism and gender equality.

Be warned: this book, as a reflection of a woman's life in the 19th century, is not happy, but is extremely satisfying because it feels so real and is extremely thought provoking.

Do not be turned off by the cost of this book. It is worth the expense and is a good quality printing.

We read Ms. Tatlock's manuscript for a class two years ago before it was published and it was excellent! This is a translation of a nineteenth-century German novel about a girl coming of age in a very repressive bourgeois culture. It was too controversial to be printed in English at the time, and went out of print in Germany when Hitler came into power. This book has a lot of history and a lot to teach, as well as being an interesting (although somewhat disturbing for those of us interested in gender equality) story. Highly recommended!