Ron Rosenbaum

Any book dealing with events that haven't happen is inherently difficult, but Rosenbaum has been reporting on nukes since the early 70s and has access to many of the most important players inside the weird and wonky world of nuclear weapons and policy. This is a wide ranging but deeply considered and well informed series of essays on nuclear weapons in the present world, and a warning to not be complacent in the "end of history" holiday following the Cold War. The first chapter looks at all show more the reasons we should be afraid including many harrowing close calls, as recently as 2007. Later chapters examine three hot spots: Israel/Iran mostly, USA/Russia, and Pakistan/India. Rosenbaum asks many deeply considered good questions that have no good answers and brings to light many uncomfortable facts. For example the taboo against nuclear weapons is well entrenched in popular culture, but this taboo doesn't exist in the military. So he asks awkward questions of nuclear ethics to members of the military establishment since using nukes could result in "100 Hitler Holocausts" and the answers are as funny as disturbing. Overall a lot of interesting insights and perspectives into a largely hidden topic that remains an important part of our cultural backdrop. show less

I loved this book. Is it repetitive at times? Yes. Does Rosenbaum have an annoying habit of using fragmented sentences? Yes. But look past these quirks, and you'll find a fascinating collection of the most interesting scholarly debates about Shakespeare's works. This is not a book about who Shakespeare was – Rosenbaum has little good to say about attempts at biography. This is a book about what Shakespeare wrote, and what scholars argue about when the argue about Shakespeare. The author show more wants you to see these debates from the inside, to feel the weight of the conflicts and attempts to resolve them. And that, for a guy like me, is what really makes this book worthwhile. For someone who prefers the "Shakespeare In Love" approach to the Bard, perhaps not so much. It can all seem a little pointless if you have no natural inclination toward exegesis. Personally, I found the question of the multiple Hamlet texts enlightening, as well as the debate over proper verse speaking (how important is a pause?) and spelling (does modernizing impoverish readings?).

The issues here circle a single, important question: "What does it mean to be 'Shakespearean'?" Can we articulate what makes Shakespeare special; or as one of Rosenbaum's idols Stephen Booth put it, "What's all the fuss about?" On this topic, I think Rosenbaum grows to an important point, which is that Shakespeare's writing is "bottomless." That is to say, the more closely you read the plays and sonnets, the more you find: more metaphors, more puns, more polysemy, more meaning, seemingly without end. "Shakespearean," then, is a supreme level of wordplay, married with a sense of human character and dilemma (dilemmas of love, of revenge, of forgiveness, of the self), that, when studied, appears limitless.

And yet, as dryly academic as this might sound, what drives Rosenbaum is a life-changing experience seeing Peter Brook's infamous staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And that, I think, is one of my most important takeaways from The Shakespeare Wars, one to which I can fully relate. It's worth your time to analyze the texts, but these are plays meant to be seen and performed. Invariably, the spark of a lifelong love of Shakespeare really begins not on the page, but on the stage.

As such, one who is already in love will find more to appreciate here than the merely infatuated. But writing quirks aside, there is much to value, and I count The Shakespeare Wars among those books that helped me to finally understand the fuss. show less

Years ago, at a flat-warming party, I was taken to task for having a biography of the religious fundamentalist Ian Paisley - the false assumption being that having a biography of someone means sharing/validating their beliefs or actions. No fan of Paisley, I was interested to know more about him to understand how so many people on the small island of Ireland could support his bizarre ideology (he is on record declaring that the Pope is the Anti-Christ - a popular belief in the 17th Century, show more but slightly less so in the 21st).

Having a book about Hitler on your bookshelf is, in the same vein, problematic and so much more so given the growth of neo-fascism and holocaust denial Worldwide. Rosenbaum's book, though is worth any embarassment its presence on your bookshelf may cause.

The reality is that this book is far more about the historians who have written about Hitler than it is about the dictator. It's more about the philosophical questions that history writing raises than it is about the chronology of fascism.

Particularly fascinating are his interviews with Holocaust-denial poster boy David Irving, and that with George Steiner where they discuss his controversial novel [book:The Portage of A.H to San Cristobal], but the whole book is brilliantly conceived and executed. show less

Debates concerning the historical and moral significance of Adolf Hitler have gone on since the beginning of his rise to power in Germany. In the decades after his bunker suicide, those debates elevated to arguments over the very nature and existence of evil. An integral part of the arguments has been the ongoing attempt to understand the why of Hitler. In this engaging work of literary journalism, Ron Rosenbaum travels the world to converse with some of the historians, philosophers, show more filmmakers, and others who have attempted to make sense of Hitler's actions, to find a root cause for the Holocaust.

Rosenbaum methodically examines the evidence for and against all the major hypotheses concerning the origin of Hitler's character. He sifts through all the rumors--including his alleged Jewish ancestry and what biographer Alan Bullock refers to as "the one-ball business"--and the attempts to derive some psychological cause from them. Various Hitlers emerge: Hitler as con man and brutal gangster, Hitler the unspeakable pervert, Hitler the ladies' man, Hitler as modernist artist working in the medium of evil....

But Rosenbaum's portrayals of those who would define Hitler are as fascinating as the shifting perspectives on the fÜhrer. Here we see the brave journalists of the Munich Post who attempted to reveal Hitler's evil to the world as early as the 1920s. We witness Shoah director Claude Lanzmann's imperious attempts to stifle analysis of Hitler and the Holocaust, branding such historical inquiries as "obscene." We see the effects, on a frazzled Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, of the controversy surrounding the publication of his Hitler's Willing Executioners. We see the interior crises of Hitler apologist David Irving and philosopher-novelist George Steiner, among others, as they struggle with the ramifications of their work and thought. And, best of all, we have Rosenbaum to serve as an informed, intimate, and on occasion witty guide. In White Noise, Don DeLillo depicted the satirical academic discipline of "Hitler studies;" Ron Rosenbaum breathes a life into the field that no fiction can match. --Ron Hogan

Seeking explanations for Hitler's monumental evil and the Holocaust, Rosenbaum traveled from Vienna and Munich to London, Paris and Jerusalem, interviewing leading historians, biographers, philosophers, psychologists and theologians. While this convoluted, selective survey of Hitler scholarship will frustrate readers looking for hard answers, it offers groundbreaking insights into the enigma of Hitler's psyche.

When Hitler's war ended in 1945, the war over Hitler--who he really was, what gave birth to his unique evil--had just begun. Hitler did not escape the bunker in Berlin but, half a century later, he has managed to escape explanation in ways both frightening and profound. Explaining Hitler is an extraordinary quest, an expedition into the war zone of Hitler theories. This is a passionate, enthralling book that illuminates what Hitler explainers tell us about Hitler, about the explainers, and about ourselves. show less