Kati Marton
Author of The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
About the Author
Kati Marton is the author of several books, most recently, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and her memoir, Paris: A Love Story. Her other books include The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World and the New show more York Times bestseller Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, as well as Wallenberg, The Polk Conspiracy, and A Death in Jerusalem. She is an award-winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent. She lives in New York City. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Kati Marton at US Ambassador Residence on October 31, 2012 in Paris, France
Works by Kati Marton
The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (2021) — Author; Narrator, some editions — 257 copies, 10 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Marton, Kati
- Birthdate
- 1949-02-03
- Gender
- female
- Education
- George Washington University
Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques
Wells College - Occupations
- journalist
biographer
memoirist
writer - Organizations
- National Public Radio
ABC
International Women's Health Coalition
Committee to Protect Journalists
International Rescue Committee
Human Rights Watch (show all 7)
P.E.N. International - Relationships
- Jennings, Peter (husband|divorced)
Holbrooke, Richard (husband) - Short biography
- Kati Marton was born Katalin Ilona Marton in Budapest, Hungary. Her parents were award-winning journalists Ilona Marton (UPI) and her husband Endre Marton (Associated Press). The elder Martons survived the Holocaust in World War II but never talked about it or their Jewish roots to their children. Kati and her sister grew up as Roman Catholics, speaking French and Hungarian. They were placed in the care of strangers when their parents were imprisoned on charges of espionage by the Communist regime. The family had to flee Hungary following the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and settled in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where Kati attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.
She studied at the Sorbonne and the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris. She earned a master's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.
She married as her second husband Peter Jennings, news anchor for ABC-TV, with whom she had two children before divorcing in 1993.
Her third husband was diplomat Richard Holbrooke. She also became a prize-winning reporter for ABC News, CBS, and NPR, receiving the George Foster Peabody Award in 1973. Among her works is Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest (2011). Her first memoir, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America (2009), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also wrote Paris: A Love Story (2012) about the years of her marriage to Holbrooke, who died in 2010. - Nationality
- Hungary (birth)
USA - Birthplace
- Budapest, Hungary
- Places of residence
- Budapest, Hungary
Bethesda, Maryland, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Members
Reviews
"WIr schaffen das."
"We can handle it" is the translation given here. It is what Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a news conference about how Germany was going to handle the surging refugee crisis in 2015. I remember hearing this. In my memory, which may not be perfect, the question was particularly what was going to happen if the rest of Europe did not step up to the challenge. The emphasis was on the "Wir," "we", meaning Germany. If the rest of Europe did not step up, well, Germany would show more handle it. Germany would do what was right. And they did. This is when I first considered Merkel a personal hero.
"The fact that one million refugees had been allowed into Germany was, of course, the headline of 2015. However, an equally startling figure...: six million to seven million Germans helped them."
"For Germany's self-image - and how the rest of the world regards the former Third Reich - Angela Merkel's regugee policy has been transformational. Nothing short of astonishing is the fact that the country responsible for the Holocaust is now regarded as the world's moral center."
This book is really a gem. It never devolves into a boring litany of Germany political mundanity ("first the Socialist Democrats formed a coalition with the Democratic Socialists who in turn..."). It has a somewhat chronological arc without being strictly chronological; after some straightforward early life biography, the book is divided into chapters which showcase different aspects of Merkel's chancellorship: a chapter on the refugee crisis; one each on her relationships with W. Bush, Obama, and Trump; one on Ukraine (written alas before the latest invasion); etc. It really sustains interest.
Merkel has a doctorate in physics, as does her husband (who avoids all media attention and just likes to do his physics in peace). She honestly doesn't seem to have gone into politics for any reason other than to get things done. She does her own shopping. The most lovable photo is captioned thus:
"Shortly after her heartfelt warning to the nation regarding the looming Covid pandemic, the chancellor was seen shopping in her neighborhood grocery store. Note that there are more bottles of wine in her cart than rolls of toilet paper. Merkel beseeched her countrymen not to hoard."
Hero! show less
"We can handle it" is the translation given here. It is what Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a news conference about how Germany was going to handle the surging refugee crisis in 2015. I remember hearing this. In my memory, which may not be perfect, the question was particularly what was going to happen if the rest of Europe did not step up to the challenge. The emphasis was on the "Wir," "we", meaning Germany. If the rest of Europe did not step up, well, Germany would show more handle it. Germany would do what was right. And they did. This is when I first considered Merkel a personal hero.
"The fact that one million refugees had been allowed into Germany was, of course, the headline of 2015. However, an equally startling figure...: six million to seven million Germans helped them."
"For Germany's self-image - and how the rest of the world regards the former Third Reich - Angela Merkel's regugee policy has been transformational. Nothing short of astonishing is the fact that the country responsible for the Holocaust is now regarded as the world's moral center."
This book is really a gem. It never devolves into a boring litany of Germany political mundanity ("first the Socialist Democrats formed a coalition with the Democratic Socialists who in turn..."). It has a somewhat chronological arc without being strictly chronological; after some straightforward early life biography, the book is divided into chapters which showcase different aspects of Merkel's chancellorship: a chapter on the refugee crisis; one each on her relationships with W. Bush, Obama, and Trump; one on Ukraine (written alas before the latest invasion); etc. It really sustains interest.
Merkel has a doctorate in physics, as does her husband (who avoids all media attention and just likes to do his physics in peace). She honestly doesn't seem to have gone into politics for any reason other than to get things done. She does her own shopping. The most lovable photo is captioned thus:
"Shortly after her heartfelt warning to the nation regarding the looming Covid pandemic, the chancellor was seen shopping in her neighborhood grocery store. Note that there are more bottles of wine in her cart than rolls of toilet paper. Merkel beseeched her countrymen not to hoard."
Hero! show less
What a mess. Very unfocused and largely uninteresting. I am sorry for Marton's loss, but I found her more and more unsympathetic as the book dragged on. Smug, boastful, and a cheater -- on multiple husbands, including the one to whom this book is supposedly a love letter. I suppose her candor is admirable in a way, but she just isn't someone I wanted to know. And now I know her a little too well.
Definitely a contender for the most misleading book title of all time.
Definitely a contender for the most misleading book title of all time.
Kati Marton is well known to many of us from her work as a TV news correspondent. In this brutally honest memoir we meet a woman who professes a love affair with a city. It is in Paris that she feels most at home. It is in Paris that she finds her most exciting memories. So it is to Paris that the story continually returns. That said, the story still did nothing to inspire any awe of the city in me. She speaks well of restaurants, apartments, all the glitterati she and her two show more husbands met with, but gave me nothing I could relate to or wish to journey to see.
As the daughter of Hungarian journalists, who were imprisoned by the Soviets during the Hungarian revolution in the 1950's and later escaped, her roots are essentially European. Her language skills are excellent. She tells the story of her early womanhood from the perspective of her student days, then early career days careening around Paris.
There's barely a mention of her first young, ill-advised and quickly ended marriage.
When she goes to work for ABC, she finds herself enjoying assignments around the world, meeting famous and important people. Her relationship to Peter Jennings, (ABC's European bureau chief and technically her boss) blossoms in spite of the fact that he was still married. But she speaks of their 14 years of marriage, their children, their divorce, and his subsequent death from lung cancer almost dispassionately.
There is somewhat more passion and emotion on display when she writes of her second marriage to career diplomat Richard Holbrooke. Together they live a fairy tale, always returning to Paris whenever they had the chance. His unexpected death from an aortic dissection in 2010 left her bereft. She sold her apartment in New York, and returned to Paris.
The entire story however, including her confession to infidelity during her marriage, is written with a news reporter's detachment. I couldn't help but wonder if this was written to justify her actions to herself, to work through some grief she couldn't internalize (or externalize?) or if it was just another reporting exercise--perhaps that's the only writing style she's capable of. She certainly shared life with two of the most able, glamorous, intelligent, and competent men of her generation. It's a shame we couldn't have seen more passion in her description of them. It's an okay book, one that is full of information, but to me at least, lacking in the emotion that one would expect from a woman in these circumstances.
A memorable quote : (when she wrote of her mourning after Holbrooke's death)
As the daughter of Hungarian journalists, who were imprisoned by the Soviets during the Hungarian revolution in the 1950's and later escaped, her roots are essentially European. Her language skills are excellent. She tells the story of her early womanhood from the perspective of her student days, then early career days careening around Paris.
There's barely a mention of her first young, ill-advised and quickly ended marriage.
When she goes to work for ABC, she finds herself enjoying assignments around the world, meeting famous and important people. Her relationship to Peter Jennings, (ABC's European bureau chief and technically her boss) blossoms in spite of the fact that he was still married. But she speaks of their 14 years of marriage, their children, their divorce, and his subsequent death from lung cancer almost dispassionately.
There is somewhat more passion and emotion on display when she writes of her second marriage to career diplomat Richard Holbrooke. Together they live a fairy tale, always returning to Paris whenever they had the chance. His unexpected death from an aortic dissection in 2010 left her bereft. She sold her apartment in New York, and returned to Paris.
The entire story however, including her confession to infidelity during her marriage, is written with a news reporter's detachment. I couldn't help but wonder if this was written to justify her actions to herself, to work through some grief she couldn't internalize (or externalize?) or if it was just another reporting exercise--perhaps that's the only writing style she's capable of. She certainly shared life with two of the most able, glamorous, intelligent, and competent men of her generation. It's a shame we couldn't have seen more passion in her description of them. It's an okay book, one that is full of information, but to me at least, lacking in the emotion that one would expect from a woman in these circumstances.
A memorable quote : (when she wrote of her mourning after Holbrooke's death)
show less
“For months letters arrive each day.” But Marton noticed a handwritten note, “addressed to Mrs. Richard C. Holbrooke in the tiniest handwriting I have ever seen.” It said: “I woke up this morning and thought of you, and of all the mornings you will wake up without Richard. Signed, Joan Didion.”
Journalist Kati Marton's 1994 book opens with a description of the massacre of Arab worshippers in Hebron early that year by a far-right Jewish terrorist named Baruch Goldstein. Had her book appeared a year later, a far better opening would have been a description of the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was killed by a far-right Jewish terrorist who was convinced that he was saving Israel by doing so. And such were the motives of the four young men, members of the show more Stern Gang (Lehi), who carried out the assassination of UN peace mediator Count Folk Bernadotte in September 1948. Marton's book is an excellent introduction to the subject, and she was able to interview a number of key players, including members of the Lehi hit squad. It is a balanced account, which while obviously unsympathetic to the murderers does attempt to understand why the Swedish diplomat Bernadotte provoked such hatred among some of the Jews of Palestine. One of the stranger parts of this very strange tale is the friendship, many years later, between Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, and the Lehi assassin who fired the shots into the unarmed and defenceless Bernadotte. As Marton discovered, Ben Gurion knew that his friend and 'bodyguard' had played a role in the murder, which Ben Gurion condemned at the time. But it is not clear if the two men ever discussed what happened. A well-written and gripping tale of a horrific crime for which no one was ever punished. show less
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- Works
- 12
- Members
- 1,764
- Popularity
- #14,590
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 52
- ISBNs
- 81
- Languages
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