Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

This is the eagerly awaited final volume of Stach's critically acclaimed three-volume magnum opus, a magisterial work. Almost 20 years in the writing, the biography had already become, even before this third volume appeared, the standard, authoritative biography of Franz Kafka. Frisch also translated the first two volumes (CH, Jun'06, 43-5779; CH, Feb'14, 51-3125). Prior to embarking on the biography, Stach worked on the definitive critical edition of Kafka's writings. He is an animated, sensitive writer who gracefully combines captivating storytelling with meticulous research. In this third volume, Stach delves deep into the first part of Kafka's life, from cradle (1883) to the eve of his celebrated, creative breakthrough in 1910, and succeeds as no one has before in illuminating--and dispelling some entrenched myths about--these crucially significant, formative years. Drawing on an unusually wide range of sources, materials, and historical documents--including an important cache of as yet unpublished documents from Max Brod's literary estate, entangled until two years ago in high-profile legal wrangling in Israel--Stach assembled a treasure trove of factual information, new details, and discoveries along with insightful observations about the complex personal circumstances of Kafka's upbringing, education, and early professional career as an insurance lawyer during a tumultuous era of intense intellectual, cultural, socioeconomic, and political foment.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Kracauer (1889-1966) was already an established commentator on modernity in the Weimar Republic when he arrived in Manhattan in 1941 as a refugee from Hitler. In the US, he set about retooling himself as an English-language critic and published his most influential works, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947) and Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960). Von Moltke (screen arts and German literature, Univ. of Michigan) offers a persuasive rereading of Kracauer in the context of mid-century New York's intellectual culture, positioning him not only as a key figure in the emergent discipline of film studies but also as an important contributor to debates about totalitarianism and democracy, the authoritarian personality and loss of experience, propaganda, and middlebrow culture (an understanding animated by his background as a German-Jewish exile and his engagement with Cold War America). Von Moltke places Kracauer in dialogue with other exiles--such as Hannah Arendt and theorists of the Frankfurt School--and with New York intellectuals such as Robert Warshow to shed light on Kracauer's fundamental humanism. Clearly written, accessible to a wide readership, and including a comprehensive bibliography, this book provides an excellent overview of Kracauer's thought and contributions to the development of humanistic inquiry.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.