It\u2019s embarrassing but unavoidable, since the world of modern publishing has now assigned to authors the job of being their own publicists. Anyway, here I go:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In just over two weeks, on September 8, a book that I\u2019ve been working on for about four years will be coming out from HarperCollins. It\u2019s called Berlin Before and After: A Cautionary Mirror for Our Times<\/em>. The \u201cbefore\u201d is the Berlin of 1929, a year I examine in some detail as I move through the seasons to bring to life that city on the verge of disaster\u2014a society \u201cdancing on a volcano,\u201d as one of that era’s more astute statesmen put it. And the \u201cafter\u201d is Berlin now: a metropolis of monuments, memorials, street signs, performances, books, TV shows, and other manifestations of that dark past, all combining to create a culturally vital city that I\u2019ve grown to love over the past two or three decades. The point of the book, or one of the points, is that however horrifying a city\u2019s history has been, its present-day citizens\u2019 willingness to remember and acknowledge the past can bring about a certain degree of atonement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the \u201ccautionary mirror\u201d part\u2026well, if you\u2019ve been paying attention to our current national situation, you\u2019ll be aware of how much we, right now in America, are teetering on the verge of our own Third Reich, our own Stasi-run East Berlin. We\u2019re in a very scary time, and I thought it might be heartening for my readers, if also chastening, to see how another place went into this dark tunnel and then eventually managed to come out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s been a nice little review in Kirkus<\/em> <\/a>so far, with other reviews soon to come, I hope. If you like, you can order the book through the HarperCollins website<\/a> or through Amazon<\/a>\u2014or, even better, buy it at your local bookstore, if such a thing still exists in your neighborhood. And for those of you who live in the New York area, there will be a panel discussion about Berlin Before and After<\/em> at NYU\u2019s Institute for Public Knowledge on the evening of Wednesday, September 30, featuring me, Noah Isenberg, and Rosanna Warren, all talking about the book and its implications. That NYU even is free and open to the public, but you need to register here for it beforehand<\/a>. Please come if you can, and do introduce yourself to me if we haven\u2019t already met.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s embarrassing but unavoidable, since the world of modern publishing has now assigned to authors the job of being their own publicists. Anyway, here I go: In just over two weeks, on September 8, a book that I\u2019ve been working … Continue reading