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LitHub, "13 New Books to Look Out For This Week"
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In Daniel Lee's The S.S. Officer's Armchair, the story of an utterly obscure and 'ordinary' S.S. officer--recovered through extraordinary research--is embedded in the illuminating context of upper-middle-class German society and family life in the first half of the twentieth century. The result is a fascinating combination of social history, family drama, and ingenious detective work.
— Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham professor of history emeritus, University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill, andauthor of Ordinary Men
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Beginning with his discovery of a cache of papers sewed,
inexplicably, into an old armchair,
Daniel Lee traces the life of an ordinary though far from insignificant Nazi bureaucrat, showing, as
his story slides into horror, that there
is no such thing as an armchair Nazi. His interviews with the surviving children and grandchildren add a poignant
postscript to this powerful
investigation of the war between memory and oblivion.
— Alice Kaplan,Sterling professor of French at YaleUniversity and author of Looking for the Stranger
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Many of the most horrific acts against humanity during the
Holocaust were carried out by the untold
thousands of low-level, virtually-unknown
civil servants, who facilitated the worst deeds of the Nazi
enterprise without ever getting their
own hands dirty. In this brilliantly researched
story of one such 'ordinary Nazi,' Daniel Lee illuminates the whole.
— Martha Weinman Lear, author of Heartsounds and Where Did I LeaveMy Glasses?
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...[A] fascinating true-life detective story, as the author engagingly chronicles his searches in archives and interviews with elderly survivors.
— Kirkus Reviews
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...[R]ichly detailed and eloquent... even those well-versed in the history of the Holocaust will learn something new.
— Publishers Weekly
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Beautiful and gripping, it unfolds like a detective story as an obscured past emerges into the light.
— Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family
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This is a little gem of a book. It is beautifully written and reads as grippingly as a detective story. The story of the quest is fascinating in itself but the result is also a work of serious historical scholarship. Its reconstitution of the life and career of an 'ordinary Nazi' throws revealing light on the workings of the Nazi regime.
— Julian Jackson
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A fascinating read.
— Library Journal
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A very well researched publication.
— The New York Journal of Books
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A welcome addition to German Twentieth Century
history.
— Seattle Book Review
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...[A] captivating portrait of an 'ordinary Nazi'... [and] a compelling account of Lee's sleuthwork, or as he terms it, 'historical detection'... [An] important book.
— The American Interest
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[A]n intriguing, honest and superbly documented portrait of what could be called an 'unremarkable' SS life.
— The Spectator (UK)
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[A] compelling
story of tracking down the secrets of a 'desk murderer'
— The Guardian (UK)
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A page-turning piece of detective work... utterly compelling.
— The Jewish Chronicle (UK)