Lost Connections by Johann Hari

November 13, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Bloomsbury USA, 2018. 336 pgs. Library copy.   Hari spent years taking anti-depressants under the belief that his depression was driven by a chemical imbalance in his brain. This is what his doctor told him when he was a teenager, and it is what he continued to believe as his depression remained and his dosage increased year after year. Eventually, though, Hari started to hear anecdotes that made him wonder if the theory his doctor sold […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Germany, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Johann Hari

I Was Told to Come Alone by Souad Mekhennet

October 28, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Henry Holt and Co, 2017. 368 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad”, Mekhennet’s memoir begins with a recounting of her childhood in Morocco. Born in Germany, Mekhennet was sent to live with her grandmother in Morocco while her mother and father worked as a cook and cleaner, respectively, in Germany. Her exposure to the language and to her family’s history as Muslims in North Africa may have set her apart from […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Book Club, Europe, France, Germany, Middle East, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, Religion • Tags: Souad Mekhennet

Rick Steves’ Guidebooks for Berlin and Iceland

October 2, 2018 by Christina

Last month, my family and I spent a week in the capital of Germany followed by a week driving the Ring Road of Iceland. Whenever I travel to Europe, I like to utilize Rick Steves’ guidebooks as I find his books to be informative, well-formatted, and filled with walking tours of the featured destinations. The latter part is a particularly important aspect of a guidebook for me as I find walking to be one of the best ways to see […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Germany, Iceland, Nonfiction, Travel • Tags: Cameron Hewitt, Ian Watson, Rick Steves

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

April 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Jeff Cummings. Brilliance Audio, 2015. Originally published 1962. 9 hours, 58 minutes. Purchased.  In 1962, fifteen years after the end of World War II, a defeated America has been split into three zones — the Pacific States ruled by Japan, the East Coast colonized by Nazi Germany, and a demilitarized zone comprised of the Rocky Mountain states. In Colorado and Wyoming, individuals who once (and still) identified as Americans live far freer than those on either […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Dystopia, Europe, Fiction, Germany, Hugo Award, Japan, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Philip K. Dick

The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

November 26, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by Jeremy Davidson. Macmillan Audio, 2009. 14 hours, 19 minutes. Library copy. Subtitled “Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History”, this book traces the effectors of five so-called Monuments Men and one women between D-Day (June 6, 1944) and Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) on May 8, 1945. One of the little known programs of the Nazi regime was to steal, plunder, and amass the great works of art across Europe […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Art, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, France, Germany, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Bret Witter, Jeremy Davidson, Robert M. Edsel

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

October 20, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harcourt, 2005. 479 pgs. Library copy. Told in a duel narrative structure, Blum’s novel largely focuses on the life of Trudy Schlemmer’s mother, Anna, during World War II in Germany with occasionally glimpses into the lives of Trudy and Anna in the United States during the 1990s. A professor of German history at the University of Minnesota, Trudy has launched an audio-visual interview project where she asks non-Jewish Germans about their experiences in Nazi Germany; a project […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, North America, United States • Tags: Jenna Blum

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré

September 9, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. New York: Scribner, 2001. Originally published 1963. 224 pgs. Library copy. An aging spy at the height of the Cold War, Leamas is preparing to retire and return home to Britain but his spy master, known by the code name Control, has one last assignment for him: present himself as a disgraced spy, be recruited by the Soviets, and root out the double agent helping the Communists to identify and kill Soviet spies working as double agents for […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Germany • Tags: John le Carré

Saving Amelie by Cathy Gohlke

September 1, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Tyndale House Publishers, 2014. 453 pgs. Library copy. A eugenics researcher from America and his daughter, Rachel Kramer, are well-received in Germany during the summer of 1939, but Rachel’s attention is on subverting the advances of SS Office Gerhardt Schlick, whom she rejected a marriage proposal from five years ago and who is now married to her former best friend, Kristine. But Gerhardt sees his daughter, deaf since birth, as a blight on his Aryan bloodline and […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust • Tags: Cathy Gohlke

Hitler’s Furies by Wendy Lower

June 2, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 270 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields” and a finalist for the National Book Award,  Lower accounts for the role of German women during the Third Reich, particularly those who traveled to occupied areas in the East (i.e. Poland, Ukraine, Austria) and served as midwives, teachers/re-educators, secretaries and typists, and concentration camp guards. Portrayed during the war by the Nazis as wives and mothers — the producers and […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, National Book Award, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Wendy Lower

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (Part Two)

October 17, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2009. Originally published 1947. 540 pgs. Purchased. It took me exactly a month but I finally stopped dragging my heels and finished Part Two of Fallada’s novel entitled “The Gestapo”. Anna and Otto Quangel have begun distributing postcards encouraging Germans to question the authority of the Nazis. This act of civil disobedience threatens the lives of the Quangels and anyone found in possession of a postcard because the Nazis […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Abandoned, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Hans Fallada

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada (Part One)

September 17, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from German by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2009. Originally published 1947. 540 pgs. Purchased. Fallada’s book has garnished particular attention since its publication because the book was written by a non-Jewish German victim of the Holocaust and was one of the fist books written by a German addressing the Holocaust. The book is based on a true story of a working class couple in Berlin who decided to take a stand against the Nazis. Their fictionalized […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Abandoned, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Translated • Tags: Hans Fallada

Refuge in Hell by Daniel B. Silver

August 31, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Mariner, 2004. Originally published 2003. 311 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis”, Silver’s book was originally assigned for a class I took nearly two years ago. The professor changed her mind halfway through the semester so the book languished on my shelves until now. In this book, Silver explores the many quirks of fortune and history that made the hospital’s survival to 1945 when the Red Army liberated Berlin possible. Silver’s expose centers […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Daniel B. Silver