Jan Swafford’s biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend...
Joachim Fest porträtiert Menschen, denen er im Lauf der Jahre begegnet ist und die ihm auf die eine oder andere Weise wichtig wurden. Oft sind es «Zufallsbegegnungen», die lange nachwirkten, manchmal auch Freunde. Ob Gelehrte wie Hannah Arendt,...
In the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent-though often disastrous-role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of...
Leah Trachtman-Palchan was an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life. This was a life of migration, dissent, exile and survival. Born in the final years of Tsarist Russia, her family was forced to leave their small town following the...
A young woman’s heady encounter with the new Russia, as she and the country thrill to their first taste of freedom
It is September 1991 and the dismantling of the Soviet Union is under way. In Voronezh, a provincial town famous for its loamy...