Endpapers
Let me start with the short version: Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home is one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve read in a while.
Here’s the long version:
In 2017, former Sports Illustrated journalist Alexander Wolff set out to explore his family’s German roots. The result is an extraordinary mixture of memoir, journalism, history and an up-close look at one family’s complicated relationship with Nazi Germany.
Two biographical narratives stand at the heart of Endpapers. Wolff’s grandfather, Kurt Wolff, was a leading publisher of contemporary literature in Germany, publishing authors whose works would later be burned by the Nazis. ( Think Kafka, Thomas Mann, Günter Grass.) In 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire, he fled Germany with his wife Helene and took refuge in the United States, where they founded a new, equally influential, publishing house, which served as gateway for introducing American audiences to major European authors in translation, including Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.* They left behind Kurt’s family from his first marriage, including Wolff’s father, Niko. Niko served in the German army, spent time in a POW camp and emigrated to America in 1948, with a little belated help from his father. He became a chemist with Dupont and assimilated to a degree Kurt never managed. But he never told his son about his wartime experience. And Wolff didn’t ask.
In the course of tracing their stories, Wolff discovers family secrets. He learns the intricacies of which family members escaped being labeled as Jewish by the Nazis and which did not. He realizes how deeply his grandmother’s family, the Mercks of Merck Pharmaceuticals, were involved with the Nazis. He takes a fascinating and horrifying detour into the tragedy of the 1972 Olympics in Munich. **And he eventually confronts the questions of guilt, shame and accountability that many Germans of his generation struggled with decades earlier and the larger questions of “moral inheritance” in general.
Ultimately, Endpapers is not only the gripping story of one family’s history, but an important exploration of our collective responsibility for the past.
* They also published Anne Murrow Lindbergh, which I find somewhat ironic given Charles Lindbergh’s political positions.
**It turns out that a security specialist hired by the Olympic Committee to “tabletop” the event predicted the murder of the Israeli Olympians in the Olympic Village with frightening accuracy in one of several worst-case scenarios. The committee chose not to act on them.
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CODA: Endpapers is a prime example of why I always read the acknowledgements. Wolff buried some good stuff in the midst of the usual “thank-you” list, including a brief discussion of historical novels that shaped his feel for the period and this gem:
Nor could I have told this story without two other women close to Kurt and Niko, my grandmother Elisabeth Merck Albrecht and step-grandmother Helen Mosel Wolff. Their voices underscore how much this narrative, despite its patrilineal spine, owes the women of our family. It is a truism borne out to me repeatedly over years of writing about sports figures, many of them alpha males reluctant to reveal their vulnerabilities: all praise to the mothers and sisters and wives who dress the skinned knees, keep the scrapbooks, vividly recall the failures and thus better sense the full arc of a story.
Sing it, Mr. Wolff!
Most of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Four Lost Cities
I love books in which the author sets out on a personal quest to understand a historical question and lets the reader tag along. Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by science journalist and science fiction novelist Annalee Newitz is such a book. Even better from my perspective, their quest is rooted in archeology, a subject I’ve been fascinated by since I was about eight years old.*
Newitz leads the reader on a fascinating exploration of the rise and fall of four of the most spectacular examples of cities that were abandoned by their inhabitants: the Neolithic city of Çatalöyük in central Turkey, Roman Pompeii, Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the pre-Columbian city Cahokia in modern Illinois near the Mississippi river. In the process, they consider the questions of why cities fall, the powerful trope of the “lost city,” and what we can learn from the failure of these cities.
The exploration is literal: Newitz visits the ruins of each of the four cities and meets with archeologists involved in cutting edge work related to each city. Some of the most interesting sections of the book deal with archeologists using new technologies and asking new questions of familiar sources to look beyond the spectacular remains and the elite leaders who ordered their construction and study the lives of each city’s non-elite population. Before I read Four Lost Cities I thought I knew a fair about about three of the four sites. Apparently not.
Newitz makes a convincing argument that while the four cities were very different culturally they shared common failures resulting from prolonged periods of political instability coupled with environmental crisis—failures that speak to our present. But Four Lost Cities is not a dystopian warning for an age of global warming. Instead, Newitz offers an appealing combination of travel account, historical narrative, hard science, and hope.
*It occurs to me as I type this that I first discovered a lot of my personal passions when I was eight or nine. (Ballet was even earlier.) Apparently I earned my history nerd card early.
Most of this review appeared previously in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Renee Rosen
I’ve known Renee Rosen for a long time. Back before either of us were published, we both hung-out in an on-line writing forum called Backspace, which was an incubator for a lot of writing careers. She was a generous member of that community, and is a generous member of the larger writing world. Since she lives in Chicago, our paths sometimes cross in real life—though not as often as I would like. And her books rock. I’m thrilled to have her here.
Here’s the official bio: Renee Rosen is the bestselling author of six historical novels including Park Avenue Summer, Windy City Blues, and What the Lady Wants. Her new release The Social Graces about Alva Vanderbilt and Mrs. Astor vying for control of New York society during the Gilded Age publishes April 20, 2021.
Rnee lives in Chicago and is currently at work on a new novel about the cosmetic icon, Estee Lauder –coming from Berkley in 2023.
Take it away, Renee!
Some of your books based on real historical figures also include a fictional woman. Can you explain why you like introducing fictional characters into your stories? And how does your writing and research process differ when you are writing about a real person as opposed to a completely fictional character?
If there’s already been a great deal written about a person or an event, I don’t want to just retell what’s already out there. There’s wonderful non-fiction for that. As a novelist, I want to bring something new to the story and I’ve found that using a fictional character can illuminate themes and aspects of a real person’s life. For example, in the case of PARK AVENUE SUMMER, I chose a fictional narrator to tell Helen Gurley Brown’s story of being the first female editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. By watching HGB’s journey unfold through another character’s eyes, I was able to spin something new and actually show how HGB impacted the life of a young single girl in New York City during the 1960s. I used a similar device in WINDY CITY BLUES by including two fictional characters–a female songwriter and Delta bluesman–along with the real-life Leonard Chess to tell the true story of the birth of the Chicago Blues and the Civil Rights Movement.
There’s definitely more research involved in bringing a real historical figure back to life on the page. You want to get a feel for how they grew up, who influenced them, what struggles they had to overcome, even something as basic as how they talked. I spend a lot of time trying to keep them as authentic as possible.
With a fictional character, I might do a little preliminary research on their occupation, or a city where they grew up and beyond that, I just let them take over. I know it sounds crazy, but once I breathe a certain amount of life onto the page, the characters are off and running. I’m just trying to keep up and eager to see where they’re going to take the story. When I hear from readers who have googled my fictional characters, I know I’ve done my job of weaving them into the real historical content.
How do you walk the line between historical fact and fiction in a novel?
I wrestle with this from time to time. I think every author has their own “line in the sand” on just how far they’re willing to go. At the end of the day, I have to remind myself that I’m writing fiction, not narrative non-fiction, and that my goal is to tell the most compelling story I can. There are instances where I’ll have to move a timeline to make the pacing work, or else I’d end up with a thousand pages that are full of drag and bloat.
Sometimes, no matter how much research you do and no matter how far down you dig, some information just isn’t available. Especially if you’re really going back in time. That’s where you have to fill in—as organically as you can—and put some meat on the bones and bring those characters and situations to life.
What’s your next book about and when will we see it?
My upcoming novel, THE SOCIAL GRACES will be out on April 20th. It’s the story of Alva Vanderbilt and The Mrs. Astor vying for control of New York society during the Gilded Age. I like to think of it as the “Real Housewives of New York City ” but in Worth gowns. It’s a fun romp-of-a-novel, full of scandals, outrageous antics and over-the-top balls that are based on true events. Even if I tried, I could never have dreamed up such a cast of characters!
On the surface, society seems very superficial but we have to remember that back in the 1800s, the only place a woman had any power, any sense of control was in society. Caroline Astor, known as The Mrs. Astor, represented the “old money” and she ran society until her rival, the upstart, Alva Vanderbilt arrived on the scene. Mrs. Astor wanted to keep Alva out of society and Alva wanted to overthrow Mrs. Astor. The result is ladies behaving badly while trying to outdo and outspend each other with their lavish parties and balls.
But it’s not all about nine-course dinners and evenings at the opera. There’s also heartbreak to be found as both women come to discover the true purpose of their lives.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
When it comes to research, I love going down rabbit holes because you just never know what you’ll find. One little detail could inspire a whole scene or a theme in the book. Another aspect of conducting research are all the incredible people I’ve met as a result. I’m so touched by those who have trusted me with their stories and memories, who have embraced my novels and even endorsed them. I still stay in touch with many of the people I’ve interviews for previous books and am honored to count them among my friends.
Question of Pamela: What are you working on now and how do you go about selecting the subjects you write about?
The problem with being the last interview of the month is that sometimes other people have already asked the same question! Here are short versions, with links to my earlier answers for anyone who missed them:
I’m writing about Sigrid Schultz, who was the Berlin bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune from 1925 to 1941 and served as a war correspondent in World War II. Her story includes working around glass ceilings, keeping the news flowing despite tightening controls on reporters, outwitting Nazis in Germany, standing up against pro-Nazi sympathizers at home, and dealing with claims of “fake news” on both sides of the Atlantic, plus a little bit of conspiracy theory. (She was the subject of the conspiracy theory, not the theorizer.
As to how I chose what I write about: I think subjects chose the writer rather than the other way around. A subject catches my attention and then won’t let go until I give in and set up a project folder.
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Want to know more about Renee Rosen and her work?
Check out her website www.reneerosen.com
Follow her on Facebook: Renee Rosen Author
Follow her on Twitter: @ReneeRosen1
Follow her on Instagram: ReneeRosen_
PRE-ORDER THE SOCIAL GRACES https://bit.ly/3leUzfn
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This is the last post for this year’s Women History Month series. Thanks to everyone who participated, and to all of you who have followed along. (I’ve already started a list of people to ask for next year. Because it’s exciting to think about the possibilities.)
We’ll be back to normal History in the Margins programming on Friday. See you then.