Sunday, May 03, 2009

What is Anne Nelson reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Anne Nelson, author of Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler.

From her entry:
The shrinks must have a name for it: you work on a book for years, buried in research. Then you finish it, it comes out – and you’re still compulsively reading on the subject. My new book, Red Orchestra, is about a circle of anti-Nazi resisters who infiltrated the regime in order to oppose it.

That inquiry led to all kinds of questions: about the Holocaust and concentration camps; on the nature of censorship and propaganda; and on the psychology of resistance. My guess is that I’ll be reading about this period and these themes for the rest of my life.

One book that stunned me recently was Giles MacDonough’s After the Reich (just out in paperback). Given the endless tomes on World War II itself, there is surprisingly little published on life immediately after the war. MacDonough’s research is formidable, walking us through the immediate post-war period in Germany and the surrounding regions. It is a....[read on]
Anne Nelson teaches international media studies at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

Visit Anne Nelson's blog.

Writers Read: Anne Nelson.

--Marshal Zeringue