Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

This is a chilling and remarkable collection, with promise of more to come. Lubrich (rhetoric, Free Univ. of Berlin, Germany) has brought together the observations of more than 50 writers, casual travelers, and intellectuals who spent time in Nazi Germany from 1933 to the end of the war. Some, like Christopher Isherwood, saw the horror coming and left. Others praised the "new Germany." Some wondered about the Jews, others did not care. A few were there when the vengeance of a raging world brought retribution. The representation in these pages of European and American belles lettres is formidable. Besides Isherwood: Georges Simenon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Frisch, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Wolfe, Albert Camus, W. E. B. DuBois, Samuel Beckett, and Jean Genet. Also included are dispatches from journalists Denis de Rougemont, William Shirer, and Howard K. Smith and the diary entries of a young Harvard sophomore named John F. Kennedy. The translations into English are excellent, the introduction is instructive, and the textual notes are in all respects helpful. Summing Up: Essential. All academic and general readers. S. Gittleman Tufts University