Ebook: Rude Awakenings : An American Historian's Encounter with Nazism, Communism, and Mccarthyism

The story of a man navigating an era of upheaval, persecution, and suspicion: "A must read for students of 20th-century political and intellectual history." --Robert Cohen, Professor of History and Social Studies Education, New York University Drawing on family papers, wide-ranging interviews, FBI files, American and German newspapers, a wide array of published sources, and her own memories, Carol Sicherman traces Harry Marks's German American heritage, his education both formal and informal, his marriage to a fellow Communist from a poor Russian family, his rocky start as an academic, his anguish when confronted by his Communist past, and his ultimate creation of a satisfying career. Her sleuthing encompasses as well the paths to safety taken by his German friends as they found sanctuary around the world--in Russia, England, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Palestine, Brazil, the United States, and Canada. "Of particular interest is Carol Sicherman's carefully researched description of the anti-Semitic atmosphere that Jewish students encountered at Harvard in the twenties and thirties, as well as the experience of a young American thrown into the turmoil accompanying the collapse of Germany's democracy and the appeal of Communism as an alternative to Nazism." --Curt F. Beck, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Connecticut