Nina Willner
Auteur van Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
Over de Auteur
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
Werken van Nina Willner
Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall (2016) 314 exemplaren
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Algemene kennis
- Geslacht
- female
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 1
- Leden
- 314
- Populariteit
- #75,177
- Waardering
- 4.2
- Besprekingen
- 30
- ISBNs
- 17
- Talen
- 2
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.… (meer)