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Nina Willner is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served in Berlin during the Cold War. Following a career in intelligence, Nina worked in Moscow, Minsk, and Prague promoting human rights, children's causes, and the rule of law for the U.S. government, nonprofit organizations, and a toon meer variety of charities. toon minder

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This book was a disappointment. It contains so much great material presented in such a dry piece of writing. There is an overall lack of focus, there is no sense of cohesion or progress. Throughout the book, there is this weird tone that seems to be in complete disconnect with the story it is trying to convey.

Clearly, the Cold War era was an incredibly difficult time for many German families that remained living in DDR. The entirety of the East German experience is fascinating, but it is not very well presented in this book. Many of the characters are overlooked and we never get to hear their point of view. This would've been solved by having another narrator, maybe to tell a parallel story from the other side of the Wall to juxtapose two different realities.

The perspective presented is Americanized and very politicized. At times this book reads as an anti-communist pamphlet, but not from the point of view of an East German, but with a distinct "Western flavour". There were also some statements such as the one about Americans unanimously supporting Reagan's doctrine that read as constructs to me. I won't even go into the overstated role of Americans in the events regarding the fall of communism, because this book was written with an American audience in mind.

At first, I didn't want to compare this with [b:Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall|226369|Stasiland Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall|Anna Funder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385280143l/226369._SY75_.jpg|219261], but I have to and could kick myself now for giving Stasiland only 3 stars, cause it is an infinitely more relevant and better-written book on the topic.

There was a famous survey by Berliner Zeitung in 2009 according to which more than half of former Eastern Germans miss DDR and their lives in communism. Surely, Wilner could've touched on the positives as well, but I guess it wouldn't fit well with her whole American spy working against the Evil Empire narrative.

Two stars.
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ZeljanaMaricFerli | 29 andere besprekingen | Mar 4, 2024 |
This broke my heart when I first read it. I'm not much one for memoirs but this stuck in my mind for awhile, that first time I read it. This was right around the time I discovered goodreads iirc. So I was thinking about it all these years later and checked it out again. It's chilling all over again. Willner writes well. I'm so sorry for what her family and others went through. I was glad to find out more about this point in history.
 
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iszevthere | 29 andere besprekingen | Dec 8, 2023 |
There are books that are great not because of how they are written, but because of the information they carry, the story they tell, or the truth they convey. Forty Autumns is just such a book, great because it tells a story that is heartbreaking and tragic, because it is true, and because it is a cautionary tale to those who have already forgotten the lessons of history.

Forty Autumns tells the story of a family divided when Hanna escapes to the west from East Germany just in time to escape the rise of the Berlin Wall. Over the next forty years, she and her family will have only scarce and limited contact, divided by the oppression of the East German communist government. Nina Willner is Hanna's daughter and becomes a US Army intelligence officer.

I was 12 when the wall came down, and the event was a landmark in my life. I grew up like many waiting for the day when the confrontation between superpowers, the United States and the USSR, would either lead to war or nuclear attack. Then, one day, it all ended, and I don't think anyone saw it coming. It's been over thirty years since the wall came down, and again autocratic forces are rising across the world, Europe is involved in a land war no one thought would ever happen again, and Germany has increased its military spending.

A whole generation has grown up not knowing what the Iron Curtain was, or how communist leaders oppressed their people, and how badly they wanted the freedom, prosperity, and rights that we seem to take for granted in the west. Willner's story--or stories, really, because it is two stories: one in the west and one in East Germany--shows that contrast in a way I've not seen quite so well demonstrated. Told with clarity and with a tension that kept me turning pages, I found it to be a stirring reminder of all that we have in America, and why liberty and freedom can be so fleeting when taken.

I will make my daughters read this book someday. Their generation will need this story more than mine, which is only being reminded of things we lived and saw in our own lifetime. My daughter's generation has never seen this, and if they are not careful history will repeat itself again.
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publiusdb | 29 andere besprekingen | Apr 4, 2023 |
Deze bespreking is geschreven voor LibraryThing Vroege Recensenten.
Forty Autumns is an exceptional story about the private lives of a family living in East Germany from the time of Soviet rule after World War II through the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.

Nina Willner’s mother Hanna escaped from East Germany, leaving behind her parents and siblings. Eventually she moved to America with her husband. Her daughter Nina (the author of this book) became a US Army Intelligence officer who worked in Berlin and made numerous trips into East Germany on intelligence missions.

Willner’s use of both a political timeline and her extended family’s corresponding timeline was really interesting. How the family was living and what they were doing was told along with what was happening politically in both the divided Germany and the rest of the world. In addition she interwove her and her mother’s timeline experiences in with her East German family’s timeline of experiences.

Her reporting of the political history is an excellent guide for those who are either hazy on what happened or those who are unfamiliar with the subject.

As for the story of her family, sometimes I cried, sometimes I was angry for them and other times I wanted to bite my nails.
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HighPrairieBookworm | 29 andere besprekingen | Apr 4, 2022 |

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314
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4.2
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30
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17
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