by finn ballard | Oct 15, 2020 | Blog
This month, I would like to step back from our prevalent twentieth-century themes and recommend to you ‘Measuring the World’ by Daniel Kehlmann. In case a narrative of German mathematician Alexander von Humboldt’s efforts to circumnavigate much of...
by finn ballard | Oct 1, 2020 | Blog
This month, it has to be ‘The Death of Adolf Hitler: The Final Word’ by Jean-Christoph Brisard and Lana Parshina, which you might well read in one sitting. At last the myths surrounding Hitler’s suicide – and his corpse – are dispelled in...
by finn ballard | Sep 17, 2020 | Blog
This month, I’d like to recommend ‘A Nazi in the Family’ by Derek Niemann. From the first sentences – the author’s memories of wintertime gingerbread and other German delicacies – this story of a very Scottish family with Nazi...
by finn ballard | Sep 3, 2020 | Blog
Today I wholeheartedly recommend the much-lauded family autobiography ‘Red Love’ (2009) by East German journalist Maxim Leo, born in 1970. Leo presents a German family perhaps remarkable, perhaps indeed very average, in which can be found traces of...
by finn ballard | May 9, 2019 | Blog
I would like to recommend Greg Mitchell’s ‘The Tunnels: The Untold Story of the Escapes under the Berlin Wall.” Mitchell focuses on remarkable individuals living in the divided capital: the cyclist who became the most wanted man in the DDR, the...
