Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941

by William L. Shirer, Gordon A. Craig

Overview

By the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is now available in a new paperback edition.

CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s—specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany.

Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the passion, the electricity in it were palpable. The book was an instant success, and it became the frame of reference against which thoughtful Americans judged the rush of events in Europe. It exactly matched journalist to event: the right reporter at the right place at the right time. It stood, and still stands, as so few books have ever done—a pure act of journalistic witness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801870569
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	05/28/2002
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	648
Sales rank:	449,825
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.65(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William L. Shirer (1904-94) was a newspaper correspondent and radio journalist in the years before and during World War II. His many books include the critically acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, This Is Berlin, and The Nightmare Years.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Johns Hopkins Edition
Foreword to the Original Edition
Part I. Prelude to War
Part II. The War
Index

What People are Saying About This

Lamar Graham

There is absolutely no better book by an American about the rise of the Third Reich. A gripping -- and harrowing -- view from inside Hitler's Germany.

From the Publisher

There is absolutely no better book by an American about the rise of the Third Reich. A gripping—and harrowing—view from inside Hitler's Germany.
—Lamar Graham

Editorial Reviews

The most complete news report yet to come out of war time Germany.
—Time

From the Publisher

The most complete news report yet to come out of war time Germany.

Time

"The most complete news report yet to come out of war time Germany."

Time

Shirer, the only Western correspondent in Vienna when German troops took over Austria in 1938, was also the first to report the surrender of France to Germany in 1940. His insightful diary captures history as a chronological "prelude to war" in an intimate and riveting personal journal. Tom Weiner's deep and thoughtful voice lends Shirer's journal an authoritative style, almost as if he were intoning a prophetic radio broadcast of the period. Listening to the detailed foreword provides a vital context to the history of the 1930s, delivering in hindsight the doomed incidents and politics of war that had not yet occurred as Shirer wrote his diary. This eyewitness account shines with crisp clarity and description, feeling, and immediacy. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2011 - AudioFile