ALEXANDER WOLFF spent thirty-six years on staff at Sports Illustrated. He is author or editor of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Raw Recruits and Big Game, Small World, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. A former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, he lives with his family in Vermont.
Praise for Endpapers: Named a Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by
the Washington Post
An Amazon Best Book of the Month (History)
"An event-filled biography and, along the way, a captivating case
study in the challenges faced by refugees attempting to remake a
life . . . Part of Mr. Wolff's chronicle has to do with the family
lineage of which he is a part, not least the experience of his own
father, Kurt's son Niko . . . Not content with registering the
tectonic shifts of the times, [Kurt] Wolff brought about
convulsions of his own, shaking up the American postwar literary
scene. His grandson's book, as enlightening as it is engaging,
measures the effects." --Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal
"Wolff powerfully uses the present to lace together the biographies
of his father and paternal grandfather . . . If war, exile,
geographical distance, American myopia, and the comforts of
upper-middle class life separated the three generations, Wolff's
book attempts to bring them together. In the spirit of
Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, the work of confronting the past
undertaken by generations of post-war Germans, Wolff uses his
skills as a reporter to sift through reams of correspondences,
journals, archives, and interviews to expose the darkest parts of
his family's history . . . Ultimately the real energy of Endpapers
comes not from Wolff's impressive reconstruction of his father and
grandfather's biographies, but from the way he adds himself to the
narrative, bringing us back to the present, to Merkel and Trump, to
the stumbling stones in Berlin that mark a victim of the Nazis, to
questions of his own privilege. Endpapers is more than a book of
history; it's a transnational, intergenerational reckoning."
--Shuchi Saraswat, Boston Globe
"Wolff explores the lives and history of his father and
great-grandfather, the distinguished founder of Pantheon Books. As
books were being burned and banned by the Nazis, Kurt Wolff escaped
from Germany and ended up in New York, by way of France, where he
began the still-flourishing publishing house. Drawing upon
extensive family documents, Endpapers is as riveting as the fiction
the Wolffs themselves have published, and deeply affecting."
--Newsweek
"Revelatory, riveting, and deeply moving . . . The question of
German guilt, both individual and collective, continues to haunt
Alexander Wolff as he dives deeper into his family history . . .
Wolff lands back in America in July 2018, midway through the Trump
years, amid a surge of homegrown nativism and bigotry. It is a
reminder of the forces that his father and grandfather confronted
in much darker times, and of the fragility of even the most stable
and democratic societies." --Joshua Hammer, New York Review of
Books
"Alexander Wolff is keen, after a generation of silence, to follow
the untold stories wherever they might lead." --Claire Messud,
Harper's Magazine
"Endpapers zigzags through a lot of territory. Wolff's journalistic
skills and meticulous, stubborn research have opened up fascinating
historical veins surrounding and preceding his progenitors . . . An
invaluable gift to literature, mainly but not only for the
quotations, details, and beguilingly written scenes of Kurt Wolff's
life scattered throughout, between and betwixt accounts of other
family members and ancestors . . . Alexander Wolff set out in
retirement eager to capture all the information he could about his
family, and in the process to finally understand Germany. Shaping
an enormous amount of source material into a fluently written and
footnoted 360-page volume, he's reached one goal, and generously
shared with readers the journey toward another." --Kai Maristed,
Arts Fuse
"Excellent . . . The diligent reader will be rewarded by a panorama
of the modern history which connects America and Germany from two
wars to the present day . . . This book should appeal to any reader
willing to examine the tendrils of guilt attached to any individual
by the ghosts of his family's past." --J. Kemper Cambell, Lincoln
Journal Star
"Compelling . . . Unflinching . . . Now, having looked more deeply
into that Germanness, the author is left with layers of ambiguities
. . . In contemporary Berlin, where the Nazis' victims are
memorialized in the very pavement, Alexander Wolff exposes in his
ancestors' experiences the common thread. It is the barest, most
basic definition of purpose in life, neither noble nor subhuman:
survival." --Robert Siegel, Moment Magazine
"Wolff delivers a poignant portrait of his grandfather, Pantheon
Books founder Kurt Wolff, and his own father, Niko Wolff . . .
Wolff skillfully contextualizes his father and grandfather's tales
with military and political history . . . History buffs and
literary enthusiasts will be rewarded." --Publishers Weekly
"The descendent of a prominent publisher who fled the Nazis and a
Wehrmacht soldier who didn't investigates his family's history and
discovers a tapestry of exile and complicity . . . Wolff reveals a
broader fascination with the relationship between historical events
and personal trajectories and concern that the charged environment
that defined Kurt's and Niko's choices is being replicated in the
U.S. today." --Booklist
"The author delves deeply into his ancestry to unravel the complex
stories of his multigenerational family, and to show how his
father's and grandfather's traumatic lives affected him . . . Will
grasp the attention of readers interested in the Holocaust and
modern German history." --Library Journal
"A powerfully told story of family, honor, love, and truth, by a
masterful writer who sees across the oceans, through the
generations, and beyond our immediate politics to share with us
what is timeless and true in the immigrant's journey. In Endpapers
we see the Wolff family through war and love, detention camps and
immigration hearings, feast and famine, kindness and betrayal,
occupying a world equal parts Casablanca and Kafka. This engrossing
and entertaining book takes us across the Atlantic and through the
last century to reckon with the full, true story of a shared family
past. It is a powerful book of conscience, of remembrance, of love
and loss and new beginnings that never quite lose hold of the past.
In a powerful and personal way this book reminds us that we are all
connected. Endpapers tells the beautiful truth that so often those
who contribute most to the culture and civic life of a place are
the outcast and the refugee. It is a personal invocation of the
power of citizenship, of what happens to a civilization when we
fail our civic purpose and what becomes possible when we rise to
it. The beautiful and haunting stories told in this book transcend
policy and politics. An amazing and timely book, which is also a
joy to read." --Former U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke of
Texas
"No serious reader will be less than wowed by Alexander Wolff's
Endpapers. The author, constructing a fascinating story of family,
comes to grips with three different lives: his grandfather's,
publisher Kurt Wolff; Niko's, a reluctant soldier in WWII; and
Wolff's own, interwoven with the others. Endpapers is a personal
history that serves the public well." --Laura Claridge, author of
The Lady with the Borzoi
"Alexander Wolff--a writer of superb grace--traces a complex and
compelling family history. His grandfather, the famous Kurt Wolff,
was among the cultural titans of Germany in the early twentieth
century, publishing the likes of Kafka, Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus and
Heinrich Mann before moving, ultimately, to New York, where he
established another major press. His own father (despite his Jewish
roots) served in Hitler's army before immigrating to the States.
Determined to excavate his family's often elusive past, Wolff moved
to Berlin for a year with his wife and children. The result is this
deeply absorbing narrative of high culture under threat, of
political and moral violence, and the deep wish for what Wolff
refers to as Heimkehr or 'homecoming.' Endpapers held me in its
spell for days." --Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me: An
Encounter
"A stunning and brave book, deep and absorbing. I was enraptured by
the story of Kurt, Niko, and Alex as they moved through the
crosswinds of the twentieth century, from Munich to Princeton, and
into the modern world." --David Maraniss, author of A Good American
Family: The Red Scare and My Father
"Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, the two greatest émigré writers,
both fled America. So did the greatest of émigré publishers, Kurt
Wolff, universally regarded as the class act of his industry. In a
compelling, frequently thrilling, and--if you have an ear for the
biting tone of Hitler's exiles--often hilarious book, Alexander
Wolff combines biography, memoir, and cultural history, rendering
them indivisible, and making clear the uncanny and terrifying
parallels between Kurt Wolff's day and ours." --Anthony Heilbut,
author of Exiled in Paradise and Thomas Mann: Eros and
Literature
"Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Endpapers, at its
heart, is an absorbing family history. But it is so much more than
that, it is a haunting exploration of guilt and responsibility, of
roots and new beginnings. Filled with stunning literary details
that any bibliophile will cherish, this is an intimate and complex
portrait of a remarkable family that also tells a wider story of
Europe and America in the twentieth century. Endpapers is a
treasure--a brave and moving book." --Ariana Neumann, author of
When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains
"Remarkable lives in extraordinary times--a gripping and
exceptional literary journey." --Philippe Sands, author of The
Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive
"An astonishing, compelling, confronting story of a divided family,
reaching sharply into the present." --Tim Bonyhady, author of Good
Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900
Praise for Alexander Wolff:
"A highly informed and fascinating look at the intersection of
sports and politics that led me to unexpected realizations about
Obama, the presidency, and the world of basketball. Smart and fun."
--Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, Washington
University in St. Louis, on The Audacity of Hoop
"In a class by itself." --Huffington Post, on The Audacity of
Hoop
"Wolff's knack for finding fascinating people to interview goes far
in humanizing basketball in a global context." --Library Journal,
on Big Game, Small World
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