What is David Krugler reading?

Featured at Writers Read: David F. Krugler, author of 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back.

His entry begins:

I’m just finishing reading two books, a novel and a work of nonfiction. The novel is a World War II spy thriller by the British author David Downing. Stettin Station (Soho Press, 2009) is part of a series featuring John Russell, a jaded but morally centered journalist. An American by birth, Russell considers himself British—he grew up in Great Britain—but he now lives in Berlin. The novel is set in November and December 1941. The Soviet Army has halted the German advance in the east, the Japanese are preparing for an attack on U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor. A combat veteran of the First World War, Russell abhors war, yet he cheers for U.S. entry into this global conflict so that the Nazis can be defeated all the sooner. Russell must tread a dangerous path. He loathes the Nazis, but he must report Joseph Goebbels’ ceaseless hokum in order to keep his credentials as a journalist. As a U.S. citizen, he can leave Germany, but what about his lover Effi, a German film star who shares his anti-Nazism, and his German-born teenage son Paul? Russell increases the risks by meeting secretly with German communists to find out what is happening to Germany’s Jews. What I really like about Stettin Station, and Downing’s other John Russell novels, is that his characters traverse...[read on]

About 1919, The Year of Racial Violence, from the publisher:

1919, The Year of Racial Violence recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I. The emerging New Negro identity, which prized unflinching resistance to second-class citizenship, further inspired veterans and their fellow black citizens. In city after city – Washington, DC; Chicago; Charleston; and elsewhere – black men and women took up arms to repel mobs that used lynching, assaults, and other forms of violence to protect white supremacy; yet, authorities blamed blacks for the violence, leading to mass arrests and misleading news coverage. Refusing to yield, African Americans sought accuracy and fairness in the courts of public opinion and the law. This is the first account of this three-front fight – in the streets, in the press, and in the courts – against mob violence during one of the worst years of racial conflict in U.S. history.

David F. Krugler is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville.

Learn more about 1919, The Year of Racial Violence at the Cambridge University Press website.

Writers Read: David F. Krugler.

--Marshal Zeringue