Tag: Review Page 6 of 17

Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries

On 28th January 2013

In Selling Hitler Robert Harris has provided an enthralling, blow-by-blow account of one of the most infamous hoaxes in history, the alleged discovery of the Hitler diaries. A potentially convoluted plot with many actors, Harris has done a remarkable job in organising the story in a comprehensible manner, and in so doing has simultaneously written a turn-paging piece of investigative journalism, full of interesting nuggets and occasionally humourous asides.

History is always a work in progress. Sewing together the past from the scanty pieces left to posterity is a difficult task, and one which can never hope to fill all of the gaps and answer all of the questions. Hence when a new source comes to light, the potential to fill in a few holes in the jigsaw, to provide answers to some of the glaring question–even to essentially rewriting history–can be staggering. In the case of the Hitler diaries, of course, the potential was immense, not only in terms of offering a personal and uncensored glimpse into the world through his eyes, but for providing further information and evidence to solve mysteries like the ‘miracle’ of Dunkirk, Hess’ flight to Scotland, or Hitler’s role in the Holocaust.

Yet the diaries were fakes, and obvious ones. Written on post-war paper, with post-war ink, the content largely consisted of dull and banal headlines from the Völkischer Beobachter, or speeches sometimes copied verbatim, i.e. including errors, from Max Domarus’ compilation Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations. So just how did such a media farce result from what ultimately proved to be such crude and unconvincing forgeries? What drove a respected magazine like Stern to spend 9 million DM on the diaries without once thoroughly checking the evidence? And how did other reputable newspapers like The Times and Newsweek similarly come to swallow the story?

Aside from being a report into this particular hoax, “Selling Hitler” tells a sobering tale of greed and ambition over rationality that could apply anywhere. The atmosphere of secrecy and conspiracy, combined with the promise of acknowledgement and riches, allowed a poor quality forgery to hoodwink a media corporation and ultimately tarnish or even destroy the reputations of the journalists and experts associated with the find. A surprisingly large number of people who heard of or came into contact with the diaries soon suspended their disbelief on hearing the most rudimentary supporting evidence. Even excluding the evidence of flawed handwriting tests, to most of the people asked to check the diaries’ authenticity it simply didn’t seem plausible that someone would go to the trouble of forging over 60 volumes of diaries and sundry other papers. Ironically enough, the whole episode rings like a quote from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, often attributed to Joseph Goebbels, that the more colossal the lie, the more likely people are to believe it.

Harris’ book is a superb summary of the whole affair, covering every angle and explaining each step as the fiasco house of cards was gradually built up, before being dashed to the ground. The lives of the chief culprits are portrayed, along with the roles played by people such as historians Hugh Trevor-Roper, David Irving and Gerhard Weinberg, as well as people like Rupert Murdoch (who has some amusing quotes). Whilst not totally devoid of personal opinion, Harris clearly showing sympathy for the Stern editors who were in his view forced to take the fall for the scandal, none of the characters are openly demonised, and the facts are objectively presented. The only small complaint to make would be that the book, first published in 1986, now feels incomplete and a little dated. My copy was printed in 2009, and it would have been nicer if a revised edition had been produced, if only with an extra chapter on what happened to such characters as the forger Konrad Kujau, the gullible and corrupt journalist Gerd Heidemann, or historians such as Irving, whose reputation gained a temporary boost by being one of the first to publicly denounce the diaries as forgeries.

Nightfall Two

By Fips

On 18th December 2012

In Books, Reviews

As one of the world’s most prolific authors, and one of the true giants of science fiction, it can be difficult to know where to start with Asimov. As a child I read a few stories and was soon hooked, but perusing his oeuvre takes some time. For anyone interested in wetting their fingers with this master of science fiction, however, the Nightfall anthology is a great place to start.

Put together by Asimov in the late sixties, it was his attempt to address what he felt was an undue amount of attention to the short story which gives the collection its name. Nightfall was published in 1941 when Asimov was just 21 years old, but was immediately recognised by the magazine editor as being worthy of a bonus rate. Unwilling to accept that his best work was written basically at the beginning of his career, this collection is an opportunity for readers to judge for themselves, whether Nightfall deserves such high praise, and whether or not Asimov’s writing style had improved in the intervening period.

This second volume contains fifteen short stories published between 1951 and 1967 (“In a Good Cause–” (1951), “What If–” (1952), “Sally” (1953), “Flies” (1953), “Nobody Here But–” (1953), “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1954), “Strikebreaker” (1957), “Insert Knob A In Hole B” (1957), “The Up-To-Date Sorcerer” (1958), “Unto the Fourth Generation” (1959), “What is This Thing Called Love?” (1961), “The Machine that Won the War” (1961), “My Son, the Physicist” (1962), “Eyes Do More Than See” (1965), and “Segregationist” (1967)). In comparison to the first volume, this is much more of a mixed bag in terms of quality. Given that Asimov set out to prove that Nightfall wasn’t his only decent short story, a lot of the choices contained in this volume seem to have more in the way of anecdotal value. For instance, “What If-” was written as a bet between Asimov and his wife as to whether he could base a story around something as simple as their train journey; the two-page “Insert Knob A In Hole B” was written during a television panel discussion, when he was challenged to write a story on the spot (he admits in the preface that he had expected the challenge to come up and prepared accordingly). Similarly other stories were written at the behest of editors seeking to fulfil a particular niche, including one for Playboy.

As with the first volume, each story is prefaced by a small introduction, which partly makes up for the lower quality of the stories. The stories are obviously a lot shorter in this volume, and as a result have a much broader range of backgrounds, so there is certainly a chance that at least something will appeal to every reader. Nevertheless, there’s little denying that this volume can’t live up to the standards set by Nightfall One.

Nightfall One

By Fips

On 18th December 2012

In Books, Reviews

This first volume contains five stories published between 1941 and 1951 (“Nightfall” (1941), “Green Patches” (1950), “Hostess” (1951), “Breeds There A Man…?” (1951), and “C-Chute” (1951)). The eponymous Nightfall certainly deserves credit for being an extremely tight and thought-provoking story, to the extent that some write of a ‘Nightfall event’ as synonymous with the end of a civilisation. The other stories cover a range of topics, including extraterrestrials in search of a disease, and at that time very topical story dealing with the invention of shield against atomic weapons. All in all a wonderful little collection.

Aside from the stories themselves, each is prefaced by a small introduction by the author featuring some interesting background information as to how he got his inspiration or how the story was received. Asimov is very self-deprecating, often denying that he is much of a writer. Whilst he perhaps wouldn’t win any prizes for style, this volume shows how brilliantly fertile his mind was, and aside from entertainment value, might spark an idea or two in its readers’ minds. Sadly, Nightfall Two does not live up to the standards set by these stories.

The Female Eunuch

By Fips

On 26th November 2012

In Books, Politics, Reviews

Reading The Female Eunuch now feels to a certain extent like reading a pamphlet from the Suffragist movement; the arguments are clear, but the backdrop is somehow distant and faded. How much that changed backdrop is a result of the efforts of people like Germaine Greer is for the historians to say, but this book clearly earns its place on the bookshelf as one of the most important works in the women’s liberation movement.

Despite being written in 1970, there is nothing stale about this book. Greer’s writing can be very punchy, at times witty, and the threads of her argument are clearly and logically set out. For a book that has sold over a million copies, she is extremely eloquent, at times even a touch grandiloquent, and her choice of words sometimes had me reaching for a dictionary. That aside, the book is fairly easy to read for its subject matter.

Nevertheless, it is not Greer’s arguments or her choice of phrasing that are difficult to understand, but the context in which they were written. It is difficult for anyone born after that time to comprehend how much society has changed in that period, at the most fundamental, interpersonal level. In this light, Greer’s arguments can seem overdramatised, perhaps even alien to someone reading them today, but there is plenty which bears relevance to understanding how we got where we are today, and perhaps knowing what we have yet to go.

Greer covers the whole gamut of the female experience, from birth and childhood, through sex and marriage, to the workplace and public sphere. In covering this massive range of subjects, from the most tangible in terms of jobs, wages and taxation, through to more esoteric notions of imagery in language and psychology, one gets a clear notion of Greer’s ideal vision. Although there are far more criticisms of the status quo than overt recommendations for change, in questioning some of the core units of society, it leads all of us to critically appraise our modes and ways of life.

Many people who haven’t read this book, and men in particular, assume it must be written by a man-hater, an irrational and fiery-hearted misandrist nailing her theses to the church of patriarchy. In truth, the book is a deep and basic criticism of that day’s society, pointed as much at women as at men for perpetuating a system which essentially encouraged contempt for half of the population, in many ways treating them as second-class citizens. There is an important distinction here between sexual equality and women’s liberation, for Greer argues for fundamental changes as a way to improve the lives of everyone. This is not a call to gender war in a Marxian vein; in fact, although Greer has a clear leftist bent, it seems she did not put faith in the class revolution to put society on the correct footing.

There are just a couple of criticisms I have about this edition. The first is that there is no index, which I feel would have been a useful addition. Although Greer divided the book into well arranged and clearly labelled chapters, it is still difficult to find references without having to guess under which subheading you might find them. Secondly, as part of a Flamingo’s Seventies Classics Series, this really should have come with an introduction. Printed over thirty years after its initial publication, with so much having changed in the intervening period, a simple outline of the society in which this book was written, and an overview of its reception and responses, would have been an extremely welcome addition.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

By Fips

On 17th November 2012

In Books, Reviews

This was definitely a case of judging a book by its cover. Although I’ve devoured a number of Bryson’s other books, the title and topic of this one just didn’t appeal to me. But when a thumbed copy turned up in my household, I decided to have a read of the first couple of pages, and found myself only putting it down again half-way through.

Part-memoir, part-history of a mid-western US state in the 1950s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a humourous look at Bryson’s early life growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. There are dozens of amusing anecdotes about the vagaries of his family, his school and home life, his holidays, and his unending quest to catch a bit of ‘female epidermis’ in the flesh. The memories of his own life are interspersed with more general comments on the changes going on in America, with talk of economic growth, changing social mores, anti-Communist witchhunts, racism and the space race. Certainly, some of the things Bryson mentions happens before he was born, or the changes run on long in the 1960s, but it’s still interesting to see a take on life in this baby boomer generation. Whilst there’s a lot here that’s surely unique to the America of the 50s, there’s enough that is so simplistically human that I think most people will find passages reminiscent of their own trials and tribulations of youth. Ironically, despite being born a few decades later, I felt that a lot of the developments Bryson talks about in 1950s American society were the same ones I experienced as a child in rural England!

All of this is delivered in Bryson’s typical affable and humourous style, which if you’re a fan, you’re sure to lap up. Some readers have quite justifiably complained that Bryson’s reliance on hyperbole and silliness to sweeten his anecdotes is a bit tiring, and makes it at times difficult to separate truth from fiction, but that’s simply his style. I’ve always been inclined to link Bryson with Wodehouse in the way he wrote slapstick humour, and felt vindicated to read that he had readily gobbled up Wodehouse as a child. For me, this is classic Bryson. Some have pointed out that Bryson’s labelling as a travel writer is going to have change with the latest additions to his oeuvre. But for me, he was never a travel writer, but a writer who travelled. After all, anyone attempting to travel across a continent armed only with the appropriate Bryson volume was merely arming themselves for a few giggly embarrassing moments on public transportation, nothing more. There are certainly enough laugh-out-loud moments here, and plenty of smiles in between, that you wonder sometimes it doesn’t come with a warning sticker on the front.

That said, one criticism that I must agree with is the book’s design. There are quite a few pictures in the book, including some family photos, which are sadly captionless and only breezily explained in the footnotes at the back. The typeset is rather widely spaced, which whilst making it easier on the eyes, is just an excuse at padding. There’s also a preview chapter from Neither Here, Nor There: Travels in Europe taking up space at the back, which makes this book despite its heightened page count one of Bryson’s shorter volumes.

Ultimately, this is a book for established Bryson fans. It isn’t as well written as the best of his travelogues, and in terms of being informative, there isn’t much here that isn’t already widely known, but for a bit of light, nostalgic reading that is sure to put a smile on your face, it easily fits the bill.