About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherFarrar, Straus & Giroux

ISBN-100374281262

ISBN-139780374281267

eBay Product ID (ePID)63044164

Product Key Features

Book TitlePrague in Danger : The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45--Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War

Number of Pages288 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicEurope / Eastern, Sociology / Urban, Jewish

Publication Year2008

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science, History

AuthorPeter Demetz

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.2 in

Item Weight17.7 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2007-046188

Reviews"Prague in Danger is a compulsive read, and very finely done. There is by now a mass of more or less analytical commentary on the Protectorate, and of course we have powerful memoirs and personal testimony. But I haven't seen the two genres combined in this way, and with such great sensitivity to the interplay of public and private. "Demetz conveys very poignantly, and with sharp insight, just what it was like to live day to day in occupied Prague, and moreover to live right at the intersection of the Czech, Jewish and German spheres. He embodies exactly what was destroyed by Nazi thuggery and then by Czech vengefulness. I enjoyed too the forays into cultural history--of jazz or film, for example, or about Orten and Jesenska; and I hope that they can be appreciated, even by those who know nothing of the background, as conveying a flavour of the period and place. "The politics are likewise depicted with a sure touch and sound judgment, as well as with an eye for the unfamiliar vignette, even in the case of the best-known episodes. Demetz's book should sharpen many readers' sense of the peculiar tragedy of the very last phase of the old multicultural Prague whose downfall he chronicles." -Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, Oxford University Praise forPrague in Black and Gold: "A rich and intricate story . . . [Demetz] deftly tells the legends of the city's origin . . . He deliberately avoids the sanitized and prettified guidebook approach to Prague in favor of a more somber register which acknowledges that conflicts were never far beneath the surface and could explode in the most brutal forms." -R.J.W. Evans,TheNew YorkReview of Books "[Demetz] writes with the ease and authority of a man showing us his old neighborhood. He seems to be on speaking terms with the many poets, chroniclers, rabbis, and clerics who lived and wrote in Prague, and allows us to read history through their lives and words . . . Reading Demetz is more like taking a graduate course with a master teacher: You know you are in the hands of an authority."-Helen Epstein, The Boston Sunday Globe, Praise forPrague in Black and Gold: "A rich and intricate story . . . [Demetz] deftly tells the legends of the city's origin . . . He deliberately avoids the sanitized and prettified guidebook approach to Prague in favor of a more somber register which acknowledges that conflicts were never far beneath the surface and could explode in the most brutal forms." -R.J.W. Evans,TheNew YorkReview of Books "[Demetz] writes with the ease and authority of a man showing us his old neighborhood. He seems to be on speaking terms with the many poets, chroniclers, rabbis, and clerics who lived and wrote in Prague, and allows us to read history through their lives and words . . . Reading Demetz is more like taking a graduate course with a master teacher: You know you are in the hands of an authority."-Helen Epstein, The Boston Sunday Globe, "Prague in Danger is a compulsive read, and very finely done. There is by now a mass of more or less analytical commentary on the Protectorate, and of course we have powerful memoirs and personal testimony. But I haven't seen the two genres combined in this way, and with such great sensitivity to the interplay of public and private."Demetz conveys very poignantly, and with sharp insight, just what it was like to live day to day in occupied Prague, and moreover to live right at the intersection of the Czech, Jewish and German spheres. He embodies exactly what was destroyed by Nazi thuggery and then by Czech vengefulness. I enjoyed too the forays into cultural history--of jazz or film, for example, or about Orten and Jesenska; and I hope that they can be appreciated, even by those who know nothing of the background, as conveying a flavour of the period and place."The politics are likewise depicted with a sure touch and sound judgment, as well as with an eye for the unfamiliar vignette, even in the case of the best-known episodes. Demetz's book should sharpen many readers' sense of the peculiar tragedy of the very last phase of the old multicultural Prague whose downfall he chronicles." -Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, Oxford University Praise forPrague in Black and Gold: "A rich and intricate story . . . [Demetz] deftly tells the legends of the city's origin . . . He deliberately avoids the sanitized and prettified guidebook approach to Prague in favor of a more somber register which acknowledges that conflicts were never far beneath the surface and could explode in the most brutal forms." -R.J.W. Evans,TheNew YorkReview of Books "[Demetz] writes with the ease and authority of a man showing us his old neighborhood. He seems to be on speaking terms with the many poets, chroniclers, rabbis, and clerics who lived and wrote in Prague, and allows us to read history through their lives and words . . . Reading Demetz is more like taking a graduate course with a master teacher: You know you are in the hands of an authority."-Helen Epstein, The Boston Sunday Globe

Dewey Edition22

Dewey Decimal943.71/2033

SynopsisDuring the years 1939-1945, Peter Demetz was living in Prague - as a 'first-degree half-Jew' according to the Nazis - and he joins an objective chronicle of the city under Nazi occupation to his personal memories of that tormented, tragic period.

LC Classification NumberDB2629.D46 2008