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NonfictionHistory

History of the hoax

Review by Kelly Blewett

Poet and scholar Kevin Young offers a history of the hoax and a chilling indictment of our current moment in this ambitious book. Bunk opens in the 19th century—the days of P.T. Barnum, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe—as Young pulls back history’s curtain to reveal hoaxes, humbug and circus tents with a sideshow of spiritualism and sensationalism.

But Young is not content to remain in the sepia-toned past. “If all of this sounds familiar,” he writes, “it is because the transformative advent of the penny press most resembles the current change demonstrated, if not caused, by the internet.” Shifting effortlessly from the 19th century to the 21st, Young draws connections between words like swindler, diddling and confidence man and contemporary buzzwords like plagiarism, truthiness and fake news. In both eras, a disenfranchised racial other haunts the discourse.

“The exotic other, the dark double” is a key player in historical and contemporary hoaxes, from the colonialists who donned redface to confuse the British during the Boston Tea Party to Nasdijj, a white man who co-opted a Navajo identity in order to publish a variety of written work in 1999 and the early 2000s. Nasdijj was exposed the very month that James Frey admitted to grossly misrepresenting the facts of his life in his bestselling book A Million Little Pieces. More than simply recounting these incidents and dozens more, Young uses them to facilitate his larger goal: a theory of the hoax itself and the fantasies that it reveals. Like a joke that brings down the house, a hoax unites a cunning speaker with a crowd that wants to be fooled. And today the stakes are higher than ever. Young examines the effects of deception on American politics, literature and everyday life. Long-listed for the National Book Award in nonfiction, Bunk is a powerful, far-reaching read.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Poet and scholar Kevin Young offers a history of the hoax and a chilling indictment of our current moment in this ambitious book. Bunk opens in the 19th century—the days of P.T. Barnum, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe—as Young pulls back history’s curtain to reveal hoaxes, humbug and circus tents with a sideshow of spiritualism and sensationalism.

Women's HistoryBiography

A journalist fighting against the status quo

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Did you know that “common scold” was once a legal term, applicable only to women, punishable by ducking the scold into water? In fact, in 1829, the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court convicted writer and gadfly Anne Royall as a common scold, sentencing her to a fine rather than the ducking stool. This bizarre trial is just one aspect of Royall’s larger-than-life story that Jeff Biggers delves into in his biography, The Trials of a Scold.

Growing up impoverished on the frontier, young Anne Royall managed to educate herself and to marry Revolutionary War veteran William Royall—a Jane Eyre situation, since Anne worked as a servant for the aristocratic William, and she was 20 years his junior. Widowed at 43 and cut out of her husband’s will, Anne Royall soon headed south, where she wrote a novel, The Tennessean, and then published a collection of letters sketching out life in the new Alabama territory.

Royall eventually landed in Washington, D.C., finding her voice in satirical writing. An ardent defender of the separation of church and state, Royall ridiculed Presbyterian leaders who sought to make government explicitly Christian, and these Presbyterians orchestrated her indictment for being a scold, “a common slanderer and brawler.” But Royall pressed on, publishing a newspaper out of her Capitol Hill house, often setting the type herself. She kept publishing for almost 25 years.

As Biggers illuminates Royall’s place in Jacksonian America, you can’t help but notice the parallels between then and now: Jacksonian populists sparred with Eastern establishment types, a growing Evangelical movement aspired to power, and petty gossip dominated Washington. (Jackson’s administration was almost undone by a minor scandal about his Secretary of State’s wife’s reputation.) Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, Biggers’ narrative is occasionally choppy, but The Trials of a Scold reveals Anne Royall’s eccentricities, her peppery writing and her remarkable, brave life.

Did you know that “common scold” was once a legal term, applicable only to women, punishable by ducking the scold into water? In fact, in 1829, the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court convicted writer and gadfly Anne Royall as a common scold, sentencing her to a fine rather than the ducking stool. This bizarre trial is just one aspect of Royall’s larger-than-life story that Jeff Biggers delves into in his biography, The Trials of a Scold.
HistoryAmerican History

An unlikely friendship on the frontier

Review by Anne Bartlett

Talk about strange bedfellows: William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and George Armstrong Custer were buddies who went bison hunting together. After Custer was killed at Little Bighorn, Cody did his utmost to avenge his death. But just nine years later, Cody was courting Sitting Bull, the instigator of that battle, to appear in his Wild West show. And when the great Lakota chief was in his own final confrontation with white men, Cody tried unsuccessfully to save his life. They, too, were friends.

Enemies turned comrades, in less than a decade? Cody and Sitting Bull only worked together for a few months in 1885, but it's a fascinating chapter in the lightning-fast transition from Wild West reality to traveling circus. In her compelling Blood Brothers, Deanne Stillman, an expert on the American West, examines their lives to explore the era’s complexities.

When you delve into it, their connection seems less odd. Both were genuinely charismatic men, natural leaders with generous natures. Both also had a shrewd eye for economic opportunity. Sitting Bull was the product of a lifetime of betrayal by whites; Cody understood that, and played it straight with him.

Their ultimate symbiosis was not unique. Even as whites vilified Native Americans, they flocked to get Sitting Bull’s autograph. And Cody had no trouble hiring Native Americans. Forced onto reservations, many were destitute and eager for even the simulation of their old lives.

Stillman also shows that a third person was crucial to the relationship between the two men: Annie Oakley. Both were a bit in love with that remarkable woman, and her story is as riveting as theirs.

Cody survived long enough to try a comeback in Hollywood, making a documentary that retold Sitting Bull’s death and the massacre at Wounded Knee. It failed commercially and is now lost.

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and George Armstrong Custer were buddies who went bison hunting together. After Custer was killed at Little Bighorn, Cody did his utmost to avenge his death. But just nine years later, Cody was courting Sitting Bull, the instigator of that battle, to appear in his Wild West show. And when the great Lakota chief was in his own final confrontation with white men, Cody tried unsuccessfully to save his life. They, too, were friends. 
NonfictionHistory

A room of one’s own

Review by Priscilla Kipp

As author and scholar Joanna Scutts writes in The Extra Woman, her provocative, in-depth look at 20th-century women and their historic struggle to find their place, “it’s easy to forget that exercising the right to live your life as you choose is still a political act, and a brave act—far braver for some people than for others.”

Among those brave women defying cultural expectations was Marjorie Hillis, a lifestyle guru whose self-help books, beginning in 1936 with the game-changing Live Alone and Like It, spanned the Depression, World War II and the reawakening of feminism in the 1960s. Dubbed “the queen of the Live-Aloners,” Hillis, a minister’s daughter and Vogue fashion editor, tackled the economic and social challenges for single women like herself (she married at 49). Her practical tips about decorating, dining, dressing and dating stayed clear of the soapbox, sparing her readers any moralizing about their lifestyle. No husband? No children? Make the most of what you have, Hillis advised, and do it all with style.

For Scutts, Hillis was a spark at the beginning of the rise of 20th-century feminism. Rosie the Riveter replaced the giddy flapper of the 1920s, becoming an icon for wartime women getting the job done. Sassy, sexy Mae West and spunky Kathryn Hepburn became, not without controversy, Hollywood idols. In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown, future editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan— and unmarried until 37— wrote Sex and the Single Girl, and the lid came off that topic. Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, asked, “Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?”

Scutts covers a lot of ground here, and she does it all so well that her readers may be inspired to dig further: the New-York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History, where Scutts currently serves as a fellow, is a good start.

As author and scholar Joanna Scutts writes in The Extra Woman, her provocative, in-depth look at 20th-century women and their historic struggle to find their place, “it’s easy to forget that exercising the right to live your life as you choose is still a political act, and a brave act—far braver for some people than for others.”

NonfictionHistoryArts & Culture

“They tried to kill us; we survived; let’s eat”

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

For a people who have experienced centuries of persecution, Jews have managed to find the humor in even their darkest moments. Spanning the breadth of that history, from the Bible to “Seinfeld” and beyond, Columbia University professor Jeremy Dauber’s Jewish Comedy: A Serious History is an erudite and entertaining exploration of the multidimensional Jewish comic sensibility, one that plows familiar ground while also unearthing humor in some surprising places.

Dauber delivers an erudite exploration of the Jewish comic sensibility.

Forgoing a chronological approach that would relegate consideration of contemporary Jewish comedy to the concluding chapters, Dauber instead organizes his book around seven themes. They encompass everything from the “bookish, witty, intellectual allusive play” of Jewish humor (think Woody Allen’s films) to its sometimes “vulgar, raunchy and body-obsessed” quality, as in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles or the raw humor of stand-up comedian Sarah Silverman. Jewish comedy has, at times, provided a sort of armor against oppression, while at others it’s served as a means of entry into the wider world.

Readers who identify Jewish comedy solely with the army of brilliant stand-up comedians familiar to American audiences will be impressed by Dauber’s ability to find humor in sources that include the Hebrew Bible’s prophets. For all their passion for social justice, he argues, “satire was among their main weapons.” He’s especially fond of the biblical Book of Esther—what he calls “the great source of Jewish comedy”—so much so that he’s able to connect it to each of his seven themes. It’s the foundation text for the exuberant holiday of Purim, and a source for the joke that wryly (if inaccurately) sums up all the Jewish holidays: “They tried to kill us; we survived; let’s eat.”

Jewish Comedy offers a comprehensive, accessible treatment of a complex subject. As the famous 1960s ad campaign for Levy’s rye bread told us, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Columbia University professor Jeremy Dauber’s Jewish Comedy: A Serious History is an erudite and entertaining exploration of the multidimensional Jewish comic sensibility, one that plows familiar ground while also unearthing humor in some surprising places.

NonfictionHistoryBlack History

A charming, fascinating exploration

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

If you only know Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. as the engaging host of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” you might at first be perplexed by what he calls “the retro title” of his new work. It was, in fact, chosen in homage to a 1957 book by Joel Augustus Rogers entitled 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, which was billed at the time as a sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! about black history.

If Rogers was a black history teacher for the 20th century, Gates is certainly one for ours. Like Rogers, Gates aspires “to be ever curious, open, and alive,” and his writing here showcases those qualities. Rogers based his book on his newspaper columns. Likewise, Gates’ selections first appeared as essays in his online magazine The Root.

A series of 100 questions with short answers, the book is a freewheeling exploration of black history. Gates takes on questions such as “Who was the first black saint?” as well as “Who was the first black person to see the baby Jesus?” and “What happened to Argentina’s black population?” An essay about the first black fighter pilot is followed by a question about slave ownership. Topics range from sports to civil rights and the slave trade, the Civil War, piracy and even the Salem witch trials.

Gates is a historian, but he is also a consummate teacher. And one of the charms of the volume is that the essays appear in no particular order, making it ideal for dipping into at will or keeping on a bedside table to pick up before bed. But be forewarned: In the hands of a skilled storyteller like Gates, this fascinating history will definitely not put you to sleep.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you only know Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. as the engaging host of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” you might at first be perplexed by what he calls “the retro title” of his new work. It was, in fact, chosen in homage to a 1957 book by Joel Augustus Rogers entitled 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, which was billed at the time as a sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! about black history.

NonfictionHistory

Marriage most royal

Review by Catherine Hollis

In her latest book, celebrated writer and BBC producer Deborah Cadbury (of the chocolate family) turns her attention to the final years of the Victorian era. Although Queen Victoria remained in mourning for her beloved husband, Prince Albert, from his untimely death in 1861 until her own death in 1901, her 42 grandchildren kept her extremely busy in the last few decades of her long reign. Finding appropriate spouses for them all was more than a mere family matter: The fate of European stability hung in the balance.

The plan, inspired by Prince Albert, was to export Britain’s constitutional monarchy throughout Europe by marrying British royalty into the various royal lines of Europe: Denmark, Prussia and Russia. If only the royals were so obedient! While some of Queen Victoria’s children and grandchildren were pliable (especially Vicky, her oldest daughter), others (like naughty Bertie and his children) were less so. Readers will need a scorecard to keep up with them all, but rest assured, there will be mistresses, euphemisms for sexually transmitted infections (poor Eddie’s “gout”) and general disobedience.

Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking is targeted at royal-watchers and viewers of BBC’s great biopic television series “Victoria.” It may also interest readers of the “what-if” school of history. What if Princess Vicky’s husband, Frederick, had lived to become the Emperor of Prussia? Would his liberal values have united Britain and Germany and forestalled the wars of the 20th century?

Ultimately, however, this is a rich history of Queen Victoria’s canny use of political power. ­“Grandmama’s” interest in the marriages of her children and grandchildren goes far beyond a doting mother’s dedication to her family: Matchmaking had the power to make and break empires—if only those being matched would do as they were told.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In her latest book, celebrated writer and BBC producer Deborah Cadbury (of the chocolate family) turns her attention to the final years of the Victorian era. Queen Victoria's 42 grandchildren kept her extremely busy in the last few decades of her long reign. Finding appropriate spouses for them all was more than a mere family matter: The fate of European stability hung in the balance.

History

The Templars

Review by Catherine Hollis

The mythical Knights Templar pervade popular culture: from the video game Assassin’s Creed to The Da Vinci Code and Game of Thrones. Warriors who lived like monks, the Templars have been inspiring legends from the time of their founding in the 11th century. In his new book, bestselling author Dan Jones aims to unpack the myths to get at the history of the Knights Templar.

The Templars were an order of Christian soldiers founded in 1119 to support the Crusades in the Middle East. Then, as now, the city of Jerusalem was both a site for religious pilgrimage and violent political dispute. Sponsored by the Catholic Church, the Crusades were in essence religious wars between Christian and Muslim armies for control of the Holy Land. Despite their vows of poverty and chastity, the Templars soon amassed great wealth, and during the two centuries of their greatest influence controlled much of the economic infrastructure of Europe. Their spectacular rise and fall as soldiers and bankers is the focus of Dan Jones’ carefully written and researched book.

The Templars exemplified the idea of militant Christianity, of the sword rather than the word. Dan Jones makes this the starting point of his narrative, emphasizing the Church-sanctioned violence of the era. This makes for sometimes-uncomfortable reading. It’s fun to read rollicking fiction about the Templars as defenders of the Holy Grail, but it’s sobering to read history about Christians killing in the name of God. Indeed, the Norwegian fascist Anders Breivik—who killed 77 people in an act of domestic terrorism in 2011— claimed to be part of a contemporary order of the Knights Templar.

The violent fanaticism lurking behind the image of the Knights Templar is an important reason for getting their story as historically accurate as possible. Dan Jones accomplishes this goal and more with The Templars.

In his new book, bestselling author Dan Jones aims to unpack the myths to get at the history of the Knights Templar.
NonfictionMilitary HistoryHistory

Standing firm in the face of disaster

Review by June Sawyers

By his own admission, Michael Korda, the bestselling author and former editor at Simon & Schuster, enjoyed a privileged childhood growing up in England at the start of World War II. His uncle, Alexander Korda, was a famous film director and producer who ended up in the United States as a “first-class refugee” during World War II, while his mother was an actress and his father would later win an Academy Award for art direction. But war is war and children are children, and in this fine book that combines memoir and history, Korda describes the coming of the war, the fall of France and the “miracle” at Dunkirk in the measured tones of a true historian.

As Korda writes, “Keeping calm was seen as a patriotic duty, even as one crisis led inexorably to war—panic was the enemy.” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy toward Hitler was a disaster. When war came, so did rationing and, eventually, evacuation for Korda. Meanwhile, the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, assessed the situation across the English Channel, announced it dire, and yet somehow managed to reassure the nation with a grim but defiant speech, which young Korda stayed up late to hear.

In his analysis of Dunkirk, Korda, like most everyone else, is baffled by Hitler’s decision to halt the advance of the German troops on British and French forces stranded on the beach, which essentially allowed the famous “Little Ships” to rescue countless men, even though a tremendous loss of life preceded the arrival of the boats. It may not have been a victory in the traditional sense of the word, but it was a triumph, nevertheless.

Alone is a masterful account of war, resiliency and England’s brave and defiant stand in a time of utter crisis.

In this fine book that combines memoir and history, Michael Korda describes the coming of the war, the fall of France and the “miracle” at Dunkirk in the measured tones of a true historian.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Lone Star saga

Review by Anne Bartlett

Roger D. Hodge couldn’t get out of Texas fast enough. After a boyhood spent doing the things that a South Texas kid from a ranching family does—working with livestock, hell-raising in Mexico—he drove off to college at 18 and didn’t look back. He never planned to become what he calls a “professional Texan.”

But it’s not easy to extract your homeland from your heart. The legendary Texas borderland ranch culture is fading, and Hodge takes an unsparing look at how it developed, what it meant and how it’s dying in Texas Blood.

Texas Blood, a title that refers to the blood of Hodge’s ancestors and the blood of Southwestern violence, is a heady, sometimes humorous mélange of family history, memoir, research and travelogue. In the course of the book, Hodge retraces his forebears’ path south from Missouri, drives pretty much the entirety of the Rio Grande Valley, interviews border patrol agents and his grandma, hangs out with Mexican-American pilgrims at the Cristo Rey shrine and explains why Cormac McCarthy’s novels are more realistic than not.

Hodge’s first Texas ancestor, Perry Wilson, was a typical mid-19th-century roamer, making perilous journeys to California and Arizona as well as Texas. Wilson’s descendants stuck around the general vicinity of Del Rio, Texas. Hodge illustrates what their lives were like with contemporaneous books, letters and diaries, the most moving stories coming from ordinary settlers.

Border history is savage. Everyone was killing everyone: Spanish versus Native Americans, Comanches versus American settlers, scalp bounty hunters versus anyone they could pretend was a Native American. But people like the Wilson-Hodge clan worked incredibly hard and built a community worth remembering in a beautifully austere land.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Roger D. Hodge about Texas Blood.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Roger D. Hodge couldn’t get out of Texas fast enough. After a boyhood spent doing the things that a South Texas kid from a ranching family does—working with livestock, hell-raising in Mexico—he drove off to college at 18 and didn’t look back. He never planned to become what he calls a “professional Texan.” But it’s not easy to extract your homeland from your heart. The legendary Texas borderland ranch culture is fading, and Hodge takes an unsparing look at how it developed, what it meant and how it’s dying in Texas Blood.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

An era of legends and excess

Review by Roger Bishop

Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of a new century, a great transformation—technological, economic, social, cultural, religious and political—took place in the United States. The rise of wage labor led to bitter union and management confrontations. Reformers crusaded for women’s suffrage and Prohibition. Reconstruction brought official gains against slavery, but racism continued against black, Native American and Chinese populations. Contemporaneous historian of the time Henry Adams, from the family of early Adams presidents, believed that by the 1870s, American governance and even democracy itself had failed. The war had extended the role of the federal government, and there was widespread corruption in business and government, while capitalism thrived.

The latest title in the Oxford History of the United States series is the superb The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 by acclaimed historian Richard White. His brilliant and sweeping exploration focuses on the big picture as well as on individuals, including the true stories behind legends like John Henry, Buffalo Bill and another courageous and very impressive Henry Adams, a freed slave who fought racism in Louisiana. White touches on some deeply ingrained myths. “There is probably no greater irony than the emergence of the cowboy as the epitome of American individualism because cattle raising quickly became corporate.” The American West, often regarded as the heartland of individualism, was where some of the first government bureaucracies began. Railroads also were a symbol of the age, but they proved to be dangerous workplaces where a high number of fatalities occurred in the course of routine work. Railroads were often in financial distress, and by 1895, 25 percent of them were in receivership.

White’s masterful book offers a treasure trove of information about a pivotal time in American history, crafted with a compelling combination of well-written recreations of events and careful analysis based on the latest historical research. The Republic for Which It Stands is the best available guide to the period.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

White’s masterful book offers a treasure trove of information about a pivotal time in American history, crafted with a compelling combination of well-written recreations of events and careful analysis based on the latest historical research. The Republic for Which It Stands is the best available guide to the period.

NonfictionHistory

An unshakable bond, forged in chaos

Review by Alice Cary

Canadian journalist Deborah Campbell traveled to Damascus, Syria, in 2007 to report on the mass exodus of Iraqis into Syria in the wake of sectarian violence after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There, she met an Iraqi woman named Ahlam who would not only change her life but also draw her into the very story on which she was reporting.

Campbell hired Ahlam as a “fixer,” a local who helps journalists arrange interviews, interprets and provides context to what journalists see and hear. Ahlam was one of the best: A smart, bold and kind mother of two, she spent her life helping others, even starting a school in her apartment for refugee girls. Not only was she an invaluable resource, she quickly became Campbell’s cherished friend.

A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War is the fascinating account of both Ahlam’s story and Campbell’s life posing as a professor while working as an “undercover” journalist in Syria. Although the country’s civil war had yet to start, Syria was a dangerous place. One day, Ahlam was suddenly arrested and imprisoned, whisked away to an uncertain fate. Desperately worried and fearing that their work together may have contributed to Ahlam’s arrest, Campbell upended her life to try to help her friend. “Caught in a web of fear and suspicion,” she writes, “I wanted to run for cover but knew I had to stay and look for her.” In riveting, heartbreaking detail, Campbell seamlessly weaves together her own search and investigation with Ahlam’s horrific imprisonment and interrogation.

Campbell also provides an excellent primer on how the Middle East’s complex history has contributed to the area’s strife. This is an important, chilling book that explores the ongoing plight of Syria’s citizens and refugees, as well as the perilous struggles of the journalists who deliver their stories to the rest of the world.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Canadian journalist Deborah Campbell traveled to Damascus, Syria, in 2007 to report on the mass exodus of Iraqis into Syria in the wake of sectarian violence after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There, she met an Iraqi woman named Ahlam who would not only change her life but also draw her into the very story on which she was reporting.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Six who went back

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Sons and Soldiers, the new offering from bestselling author Bruce Henderson, is a compelling account of Jewish refugees who came to the U.S., then returned to Germany to fight against Hitler. Nearly 2,000 German-born soldiers of the U.S. Army were sent to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. Known as the “Ritchie Boys,” the soldiers were trained to use their language skills as interrogators in the field.

Although nonfiction, the book reads like a novel, as Henderson focuses on six young men, each with a harrowing personal story of escape from Germany. Martin Selling was especially lucky. In November 1938, as part of the violent campaign known as Kristallnacht, he was sent to Dachau for several months. Thanks to the efforts of an aunt, Selling was freed, and eventually made his way to America. Although he had experienced the horrors of Nazi interrogation firsthand, he developed a non-confrontational debriefing technique that uncovered information that saved American lives time and time again.

Getting to know the men as unique individuals adds depth to their later wartime experiences serving in campaigns such as D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. Perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect is the young soldiers’ attempts to find friends and family members after the end of hostilities as they—and the world—came to realize the full horror of the Holocaust.

Based on interviews with the veterans and archival materials, Henderson has crafted a fascinating narrative that also serves as a somber reminder, once again, of the devastating personal toll that World War II exacted from innocent, loving families.

Sons and Soldiers, the new offering from bestselling author Bruce Henderson, is a compelling account of Jewish refugees who came to the U.S., then returned to Germany to fight against Hitler.

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