City of Thieves

City of Thieves by David Benioff, 258 pages.

Lev Beniov is a young man trying to reach adulthood in the harshest circumstances possible. The Nazi siege of Leningrad seems endless, everyone in the city is teetering on the edge of starvation, and crimes are punished without mercy. Which is why taking the knife off a dead German soldier is considered a crime that comes with a death sentence. A powerful colonel tells him that if he and the charismatic deserter her was imprisoned with bring him a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake, they will not only live, but be rewarded. The task seems impossible in a city that has been starving for months, but Lev and Kolya will plunge into the most dangerous situations for a chance at life.

This book has an interesting premise, and has some really solid adventure elements. That being said, it definitely feels like a book written by a man, for men. It is a coming-of-age story that feels like it has a lot to set it apart with extraordinary circumstances, but Benioff's overreliance on tired tropes makes it feel a little cliche despite everything working in its favor. It's a fairly solid work of historical fiction, but I don't know that I would recommend it unless you are particularly interested in the siege of Leningrad.

A selection of August graphic novels

 Middlewest: The Complete Tale by Skottie Young with art by Jorge Corona (2021) 560 pages

I first encountered Skottie Young's work as an artist in the Marvel Oz adaptations. When I saw the story synopsis of this adventure Young wrote I knew I would enjoy it. There are multiple homages to the land of Oz. Middlewest could be Kansas. There's a deep level and a surface layer. The story explores generational trauma and men with anger issues. But visually it is a thrilling fantasy world, not quite like our own. Abel's closest confidant is a talking fox, there are diesel-punk flourishes, and a found family in a traveling carnival. By about half way through, the story ventures in its own direction with less obvious Oz references. There is human trafficking of children as farm workers. As more characters become involved in the story, and with multiple characters who turn into violent storms, there are wide shots with a lot of chaos where it is hard to keep track of all the moving parts. However, the art by Jorge Corona with color by Jean-Francois Beaulieu really pops the majority of the time.

Climate Changed: A Personal Journey through the Science by Philippe Squarzoni (2012) 467 pages

Through references to films and other books the author let's us into his thought process on how to begin, end, and present compelling arguments in graphic non-fiction form. It is part memoir, but still the bulk of it is presenting the facts about human technology and its effect on the Earth's environment. The author is French and he interviews several experts from France, but they represent international nonprofits or governmental advisory boards in many cases. Climate change is true. It is time to stop denying it. We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions! But will Capitalist powers in the industrialized world get behind changing our way of life? There is a metaphor that the author describes about a parachutist who forgot his parachute that is very impactful. At over 450 pages, there are so many facts and figures, as well as sociological concerns to take in. The strongest message that Squarzoni conveys is that we are running out of time to stop or reverse the damage done to this ecosystem we share.

A Girl Called Echo Omnibus by Katherena Vermette with art by Scott B Henderson (2023) 224 pages

Issue #1 feels too short. You spend quite a bit of time with Echo in the real world, not just time traveling back to the 19th century. There isn't a fantasy or sci-fi method to her time traveling. It is more like she has a great imagination and a good history teacher. Echo seeks out other books about the Pemmican Wars period in her school library rather than just relying on the class's textbook. She's a good student although she has a hard time making friends. She loves rock music and has a shaky relationship with her mom. The art is good, but not super exciting. In issue #2, Echo begins to make friends in middle school and falls in love with a boy back in the 1800s. The Metis fight for their right to govern themselves when their territory is sold to Canada. Again with the history lesson we are given very brief highlights of major events, but I wish it was more in depth. I wish we learned more about the people and how they lived. I did not fully understand the political maneuvering. There are a couple pages that act as montages, but the writer and artist are trying to pack too much information into those pages. They should have been given more pages to tell the story. Issue #3 spends less time in Echo's modern day life with more pages devoted to 1885. The history is the real selling point and we get some continuity between issues 2 and 3. I like that the authors acknowledge the emotional trauma that Echo is experiencing as a witness to history. The resistance fighting can lead to death and loss, but it is necessary. The writer connects Echo to her ancestry directly in this one. Issue #4 is a pretty strong conclusion that wraps up the loose threads. Echo gains more control of when she travels back and forth in time. US history and Canadian history are fairly similar in constantly taking land from Indigenous people. There are no big surprises in this issue, but Echo is shown by people in her life (past and present) that despite the anger and pain her people have survived and have a future.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - The Scorpius Run by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott with art by Angel Hernandez (2024) 128 pages

Fun adventure. This takes place sometime before the current third season, which is airing as I read this. Good art of new characters and old. The villain seems to have god-like powers. The full Enterprise crew, plus newly introduced aliens, all have important parts to play. A dangerous spaceship race is set up in this new Scorpius Sector and Captain Pike must figure out how to unite the competitors.

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small (2009) 329 pages

A blurb on the back cover from a critic at the Washington Post is spot on.      "[Small] employs angled shots and silent montages worthy of Alfred Hitchcock." The author's ability to show us his dreams and nightmares is amazing. His real life is so full of angry silences and repressed emotions. One dream while visiting grandma with Jesus on a crucifix repeating his grandma's words, "He was a Durn Little Fool!" is especially memorable. Alice in Wonderland provides some meaningful symbolism through Small's young life too, including his therapist being the white rabbit. The many surprise revelations of his troubled family are tough, but somewhat relatable.

The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix (2018) 176 pages

Good coverage of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life and some German history. I like the visuals too, a combination of realistic and symbolic. The rise of Hitler is described in detail. Then we learn about Dietrich's rebel seminary as Nazi's were coming to power and the German spy agency Abwehr (pronounced UP-fair) that contained many agents who were conspiring to stop Hitler. Each of three attempts to assassinate Hitler are described with high suspense. The author says, "This story is not primarily a work of scholarship but a work of art," but I commend his research. Very successful graphic nonfiction.

Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook

Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees, 487 pages

In 1946, British teacher Edith Graham is recruited by a longtime friend to be a spy in post-war Germany under the cover of helping re-establish schools there. Her mission? To track down her ex, who also happens to be a doctor whose unconventional research made him an asset to the Nazi regime. During her time in Germany, Edith also collects local recipes, which double as code when she sends them to a friend back home. But as she gathers intelligence, it becomes harder and harder for Edith to figure out who to trust.

There have been many books written about scrappy young women playing a vital role in World War II, and despite taking place post-war, this book fits neatly into that subgenre. That said, Edith's relative naivete, as well as her reluctance to continue with her spycraft, give this one a bit of a different tone, one that I'm still not sure if I enjoyed. That said, if you're a fan of the aforementioned subgenre, give this one a read. The recipes alone are worth a gander.

The Order

The Order by Daniel Silva  496 pp.

In this, the latest Gabriel Allon tale, the suspicious death of the Pope distracts Mossad Director Allon from a much needed family vacation. Pope Paul VII, whose life was saved by Allon in The Messenger, dies in his chambers while his personal secretary, Archbishop Luigi Donati is away from the Vatican. Because of the circumstances of the death and missing items from the Pope's study, Donati believes the Pope was murdered. He calls on his friend Allon to help investigate and together they learn of a plot by the secret Order of St. Helena, an organization with connections to the Nazis, to place the candidate of their choice as Pope and bolster the rise of their cause in Europe. Silva draws from today's headlines for much of the story's background. I only hope he is not as prescient as he was about the Arab Spring events in Portrait of a Spy. I usually read Silva's books as soon as it comes out and then wait impatiently for a year for the next one. I waited a bit before starting this one and now only have to wait 11 months. The audiobook was read by my favorite narrator, George Guidall, who does an excellent job, as always.

An Elephant in the Garden

An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo  199 pp.

This is the first book for the new season of my Treehouse Book Club. It's the story of a family of refugees and their companion, a Canadian airman, from the bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II. What makes this story a bit different is the presence of a friendly elephant, once a resident of the Dresden Zoo, who travels with the family. The mother, a zoo employee, rescues the elephant from certain death when the animals were slotted for death to prevent their escape if the city was bombed. The story is told by the oldest daughter who, as an old woman, becomes a patient in a nursing home. Keeping the secret of the airman's identity while he aids the family in their escape adds tension to the story. Morpurgo, author of War Horse, created this novel after hearing a true story about a zookeeper in Northern Ireland who saved an elephant from the zoo during WWII.

From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes

From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes by Robert Clary (2001) 214 pages

I grew up watching the TV series Hogan's Heroes and my kids enjoyed watching it on DVD decades later. I sometimes wondered whether those who were harmed by the Germans in WWII found the show to be insensitive or inappropriate. Little did I know that Robert Clary (born Robert Max Widerman), who played Louis Lebeau on Hogan's Heroes, was himself a survivor of German camps, from age 16 to 19. I hadn't known much about him other than his role on Hogan's Heroes, and I enjoyed reading about his life, but was especially struck by his time in Paris when the German occupation started, through the deportation of his family, and his regrouping after the war. Later, I was interested in the descriptions of his years working on Hogan's Heroes, as well in later years when he became active in speaking to groups of children about the Holocaust.

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: a Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past / Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair, trans. by Carolin Sommer, 221 p.

Teege, the daughter of a white-German mother and a Nigerian father, was placed in an orphanage as an infant and later adopted by a white German family.  As an adult she stumbled across a library book that pointed her to the truth about her biological mother, and her beloved grandmother, with whom she remained in contact throughout her childhood.  Her grandmother was the mistress of Commandant Amon Goeth of the Plaszow concentration camp, whose character was portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List.  This was Jennifer's biological grandfather.  To make the (true) story just a little more incredible, as a young adult, Jennifer lived for several years in Israel, obtained a degree there, and had very close Israeli friends.  The book is a deliberate unwinding of Jennifer's process of coming to grips with this past and moving forward.  A highly accessible, straightforward account. 

Eva Luna

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende  307 pp.

This is an older novel by Chilean author Allende who is one of my favorites. The title character is the daughter of a mixed race woman who was raised in a Catholic orphanage and a man who was dying of snakebite. Eva grows up in the household where her mother works for a professor who doesn't realize Eva exists until her mother's death. Eva is a born storyteller who wraps her dreams and real life into amazing tales. Allende creates a world with interesting characters including a transgender actress, a revolutionary guerrilla fighter, and a filmmaker who is a survivor of Nazi oppression and parental abuse. They all weave together in stories of wealth, poverty, love, hate, war, and peace leaving the reader to wonder what is truly  Eva's life and what are the stories she creates. While this isn't my favorite Allende novel, it is one of the best.

The Stone Crusher: The True Story of a Father and Son's Fight for Survival in Auschwitz

The Stone Crusher: The True Story of a Father and Son's Fight for Survival in Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield, 388 pages.

A devastating and haunting look at the lives of Gustav and Kurt Kleinmann and their family. The Kleinmanns were Austrian Jews; the family lived in Vienna, and Gustav had served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, but when the Anschluss came his life and the lives of every member of his family were derailed, uprooted or destroyed.
A remarkably well-written book which follows the disturbing and unique story of a father and son who were both interned in Nazi concentration camps from before the war began until the camps were liberated. Both men faced death constantly and found their own lives balanced on a razor's edge many times. Father and son depended on each other to keep going, but they both had to be remarkably adaptable, resourceful and very lucky to survive. The paths of the the other Kleinmann children and their mother are also recounted. Remarkable and deeply moving.

Maus II: A Survivor's Tale

Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman  135 pp.

This continues the story of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, continuing from where the first book ended, with Valdek and Anja at the gates of Auschwitz. Depictions of life in the concentration/extermination camp are suitably dark. By probing into his father's story, the author learns the reasons for much of his father's behavior. Scenes from the holocaust are juxtaposed against scenes of Vladek's and Art's stormy relationship in the 1980s. It is not an easy book to read because of the subject matter and the bare, traumatic truth within. This is one of the books being read for the Great Stories Club at the Lieberman  Learning Center. I look forward discussing it with the teens.

Maus

Maus: A Survivor's Tale I: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman  159 pp.

I read this back when I first started working at the library. I re-read it now before re-reading the second volume for my book club at the alternative school. This is the award-winning and ground breaking graphic novel about Spiegelman's parents' experiences during the Holocaust. Spiegelman depicts the characters as animals: his family and other Jews are mice, the Poles are pigs, the French are frogs, Americans are dogs, and the Nazis are cats. This is the book that changed graphic novels into something more than just "comics."

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, 336 pages.

The author based this book on an account given to her by the person on whom the protagonist was based. While it makes for compelling reading, and it is a decent book, I felt that the author did not do a great job in making the protagonist seem like a believable character. Just my opinion. I am willing to believe that the person on whom this story is based was as brave, resilient, and selfless as the author tells us, but I also feel that her telling did not really do that character justice. Or, I believe the story on which it is based, but not necessarily the character in the novel.

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege & Nikola Sellmair  221 pp.

German born Jennifer Teege was 38 years old when she found a book in the library titled I Have to Love My Father, Don't I?. She was shocked to discover it was about her birth mother, Monika Göth who had put her up for adoption as a small child. Teege is the daughter of Göth and a Nigerian man. Her mother's father was the infamous SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth, commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp near Kraków, Poland who would be played by actor Ralph Fiennes in the film "Schindler's List." The horrifying discovery of her ancestry and that the grandmother she adored was complicit by denying the deaths of thousands of Jews at the hands of her husband devasted Teege's entire life. The books tells the history of Amon Göth's brutality and how Teege was able to eventually come to grips with the knowledge that had he known her, her grandfather would have wanted her dead. Chapters alternate between the historical facts and Teege's personal experiences.

Transcription

Transcription by Kate Atkinson, 343 pages.

It's getting to the point that knowing that there is a new book by Atkinson coming can be a light off in the distance that keeps me going.
And while Transcription doesn't necessarily transcend all other recent fiction, in the way that Life After Life or A God in Ruins both did (admit it, they did), Transcription, with its switchbacks, slow motion pursuit, and plot-twists and turns, certainly equals the top tier of current fiction. Transcription is like the Jackson Brody novels in that respect. Juliet At loose ends after the death of her mother, Armstrong finds herself working for MI5. It's 1940 in Endland, and the 18-year-old is set to transcribing the secretly made recordings of meetings of Nazi sympathizers. Armstrong mus make decisions concerning the fates of those she is observing, her coworkers, and agents she hardly knows. Juliet discovers the layers of loyalty and betrayal that exist or that seem to exist. Her choices continue to impact her life as the story continues five years after the war's end. All of the characters are nuanced and finely drawn, and all of the situations and settings are shrouded in a foggy ambiguity. Armstrong, who seems so much older than eighteen, with a confidence that never seems misplaced, but oftne is, must decide who to believe and which path to follow. Fascinating.
The audio is very well narrated by Fenella Woolgar.

1947: Where Now Begins

1947: Where Now Begins by Elsabeth Asbrink, 280 pages.
Asbrink moves chronologically through this year, month-by-month through a  year that she argues was a turning point for humanity, or for a good part of it. She tells us about refugees in Vienna, in London, in France, and in Palestine. She talks of the weariness the English seemed to feel in Palestine, unwilling to struggle anymore with Jewish refugeesor with the Palestinians, leaving the fate of  a one-state or a two-state Palestine up to an international committee and then to the UN. The English left India in a hurry as well in 1947. Lord Mountbatten quickly and recklessly moved ahead with partition despite the warnings of imminent violence.
Asbrink also tells of the growing hostility shown by the Soviet Union towards politicians and citizens with any ideology other than the state-sponsored one in their newly acquired satellite states.
She ably weaves the big stories with the more focused and personal in the compelling book.

The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance

The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance by Anders Rydell, 352 pages.
Rydell has written an illuminating and meticulously researched account of the concentrated and deliberate efforts by several groups of Nazi functionaries to acquire, steal, seize, and collect all the available literature by and about Jews, Freemasons, witches, socialists, and communists throughout the countries they controlled, invaded or occupied. Through these seizures the Nazis engaged in a systematic effort (or several competing systematic efforts) to rewrite history, deleting accounts of people they loathed and seeking to insert instead their own warped vision.
Groups like the RHSA (SS -Reichssicherheitshauptamt, a part of Heinrich Himmler's SS) and the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (the ERR, a free-standing Reich organization, controlled by Alfred Rosenberg) competed with each other to seize the biggest and most While tracing individual books and collections in the same manner  as The Monuments Men and other works that concentrated on the Nazi looting of art, Anders also delves deeply into the history of the actors within the Reich, the original owners of the collections and the men who secretly tried to save the histories of people, groups and cultures from the Nazis. A fascinating book, very well researched, and well written by Rydell, and capably translated from the Swedish by Henning Koch.

The Women in the Castle

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck  356 pp.

 A German aristocrat, the wife of one of the conspirators killed after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, attempts to fulfill her promise to protect the widows and children of the other conspirators. She returns to the once beautiful stone fortress in the mountains with her children, the wife and son of her dearest friend, and another woman and her children who had been in a camp for displaced persons. But Marianne von Lingenfels has trouble reconciling her staunch ideals with the reality of their post-war lives. She feels betrayed by the others when she discovers their secrets and as they attempt to make new lives for themselves even if that means developing relationships with those who had been Nazis. There is some reconciliation among the characters but not until after her interference creates a tragedy. This book seems to be longer than it is because of the amount of difficulty and sadness within the story.

Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers

Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers by Guenter Lewy, 195 pages.
Lewy seems to be wanting to get to some definitive answers as to the motives of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, without going too far in any one direction. The book is massively sourced and footnoted,  with  over 30 pages of source material, and 156 footnotes in the second chapter alone. At the same time, with only 136 pages of text including the introduction, he doesn't seem to leave himself a lot of room to explore his several topics in depth.
He covers the concentration camps, deaths by shootings, the development of more efficient ways of killing (seeking to avoid stresses on the killers), the hunt for and trials of those responsible, all while trying to give individual and group motivations for killing thousands and thousands of people. An interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying book.

Lunch with Charlotte

Lunch with Charlotte by Leon Berger  404 pp.

Charlotte Urban nee Goldberger had lunch with the author every Friday for the last 25 of her 91 years. In that time she told the story of living through the rise of the Nazis in her home city of Vienna and surviving Kristallnacht with her mother. Through contacts of her father who was trapped in England when the borders were closed, the Rothschilds, and lying about her age, Charlotte gains a place on the Kindertransport which evacuated Jewish children out of the Nazi territories. Charlotte reveals what her life during the war was like, not as a concentration camp prisoner, but as young Jewish woman living through war-time on the side of the Allies. Her story is one of strength and sorrow offered in an honest, straight-forward way.

The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert Edsel with Bret Witter, 473 pages

During World War II, the Nazis stole and hoarded thousands of priceless artworks and cultural treasures. While some were lost or destroyed during the years of the war, an astonishingly high number of these pieces survived, thanks to the work of an American and English collaborative unit, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section, also known as the Monuments Men.

Edsel's book gives a thorough examination of these unsung heroes in their earliest days, when only a handful of Monuments Men were working, without supplies and often on their own in combat situations, were attempting to save some of the most treasured artworks and cultural sites in Europe. It's a fascinating tale; though if this book has any fault, it's that Edsel crams too much information in. Any one of the original Monuments Men and their allies (particularly the astounding Rose Valland) could easily be the subject of his or her own book, yet Edsel's determination to shoehorn in all the original Monuments Men makes the story a bit muddled. That said, it's still worth a read, as this is a history that needs telling.