notanotherbookreview

City of Women by David R. Gillham, an Amy Einhorn Book, published by  Penguin Group (USA). What is it about Berlin 1943 that we keep revisiting this time of impending doom, as the once indomitable Third Reich began to crack up? Hasn't this era and its aftermath been explored ad nauseum in fiction and films like "The Berlin Stories"/Cabaret, “The Good German,” "The Piano," "Sarah's Key," "The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas," Erich Maria Remarque’s unforgettable play Full Circle, and of course Gunter Grass's "The Tin Drum.?" Then I read City of Women by David R. Gillham (August, Penguin Group), whose heroine is someone I haven't met before. Sigrid Schroeder is not decadent, burnt out or a Nazi zealot who sees the light. She's a regular "haus frau,"except that she's not.  She has a job and no children, which separates her from her mother-in-law's generation. That woman continually scrubs, while self-...

You're Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You're Still Wrong) : Conversations between a Devoted Conservative and a Die-Hard Liberal by Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess published by Potomac Books. This book, in my opinion, should be read by every American who might possibly be sick of the "punch & judy show" we call national politics. This is the rare nonfiction book I'm reviewing, because I think it's important (not because I do book pr, though I choose books I think are valuable). Jacob Hess and Phil Neisser are the Conservative and Liberal, who engage in dialogue about “hot-button” issues seeking not agreement but understanding. And it hasn't come easily. The two met at a conference on dialogue. Jacob was one of the few conservatives presenting, Phil had recently published a book, saying how Americans no longer knew how to disagree constructively. Though Jacob, a religious Conservative of Mormon background, has convictions tota...