Book review: The Ravine, by Wendy Lower & Those Who Forget, by Geraldine Schwarz In her new book The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed, Wendy Lower, a historian with extensive work around the Holocaust, is put onto an intriguing research journey: Lower encountered an extremely rare photograph depicting the murder of... Continue Reading →
Two Histories From Austria: Hitler and the Habsburgs & Hedy’s Folly
Although it was overshadowed by the US Election Day beginning the next morning, on November 2 there was a terror attack in my former home of Vienna. I lived there for more than seven years and met my husband there, so it'll always be a place precious to me, even if I was very ready... Continue Reading →
Mystery and Cover-Up: What Happened on an Austrian Ski Slope in 1989?
Book review: Cold a Long Time, by John Leake (Amazon /Book Depository) The anguish caused by a family member’s disappearance is difficult to describe ...The unexplained absence of someone you love produces a void into which all normal life collapses. Though your panic will eventually subside, your all-consuming desire to know what happened will not. The... Continue Reading →
An Austrian Serial Killer: The Strange Story of “Rehabilitated” Murderer Jack Unterweger
Book review: The Vienna Woods Killer, by John Leake (Amazon / Book Depository) John Leake, an American writer who lived nearly a decade in Vienna, wrote this definitive account of Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Unterweger's is quite the interesting story, not least because the crime of serial murder is far from common in Austria. Combined... Continue Reading →
A Family Broken Apart by War and a Stylistic Trek Across Europe
Book review: Maybe Esther, by Katja Petrowskaja (Amazon / Book Depository) The train station was recently built in the middle of this city, and despite the peace the station was inhospitable, as though it embodied all the losses that no train could outrun, one of the most inhospitable places in our Europe, united as it is... Continue Reading →
Dark Roots and the Myth or Reality of a European Family History
Book review: A Crime in the Family, by Sacha Batthyany Swiss journalist Sacha Batthyany heard a disturbing rumor: near the end of the Second World War, his Aunt Margit was alleged to have participated in the massacre of hundreds of Jewish prisoners in the small Austrian town of Rechnitz. The crime took place during a... Continue Reading →
The Life and Science of the Physicist Who Changed Quantum Theory
Book review: Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution, by John Gribbin In honor of the 130th anniversary of Erwin Schrödinger's birth on August 12, I'm posting a previously published review I wrote on a pop biography of his life and work. The intricacies of a life are woven inextricably into the weave of work and the... Continue Reading →
The Lost Libraries of Europe
The portal of the Berlin City Library (Berliner Stadtbibliothek) at Breite Straße 32-34 in Berlin-Mitte. It shows steel plates with 117 variations of the letter "A", created by Fritz Kühn in 1965. By Beek100 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons Book review: The Book Thieves, by Anders Rydell This is to... Continue Reading →