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Outstanding
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Salon Jonathan Shainin
In unsparing prose that brooks no pity and assigns no blame, the diarist calmly describes the disintegration of the German capital.
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Outstanding
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San Francisco Chronicle Edie Meidav
Destined to be a classic.
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Outstanding
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The New York Times Joseph Kanon
One of the most important documents to emerge from World War II.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Cressida Connolly
A gift of the utmost value to historians and students of the period.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Joanna Bourke
The vision is bleak, but there are times of unbearable poignancy.
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Kai Maristed
There is no hint of self-pity in her journal, nor any attempt at self-exoneration. [5 Aug 2005, p. E14]
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Outstanding
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Entertainment Weekly Karen Karbo
An astonishing record of survival.
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Frank and affecting, a remarkable piece of war literature.
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
The author, who died in 2001, has a fierce, uncompromising voice, and her book should become a classic of war literature.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Nigel Jones
Coolly written, tearingly honest, yet calm and dispassionate almost to a fault, this is a classic not only of war literature but also of writing at the very extreme of human suffering.
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Outstanding
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New York Review Of Books Gabriele Annan
In one entry after another, [the diarist] manages to be brisk and perceptive, vivid, evocative, horrified, disgusted, heart-rending; and there is even an occasional murmur from the undercurrent of laid-back and quite friendly sarcasm that Berliners like to claim as their special brand of humor.
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Favorable
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PopMatters Lester Pimentel
A Woman in Berlin will stand as a civilian's devastating chronicle of the barbarism of total war.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Richard Eder
Not heroic, and no doubt insufficient. But, if you like, clean. And above all useful.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Frederic Krome
Although her diary does not add much to the larger picture of the last days of the war, it provides an important perspective on the tribulations facing ordinary Berliners during the siege and early occupation of their city by the Red Army. Recommended. [1 Jul 2005, p. 96]
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Favorable
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Washington Post Ursula Hegi
This voice is irreverent and insightful, focused and without self-pity and hypocrisy.
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Favorable
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The Observer Simon Garfield
There is a determinedly poetic flavour to many descriptions.
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Favorable
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The Observer Linda Grant
While A Woman in Berlin lacks the great moral interrogation of Primo Levi's post-war accounts of Auschwitz, what the books share is a voice describing the lived experience of horror that the mind almost always prefers to forget, the examination of painful memories, the questioning of the impact that it has on the self, and on the inner struggle to survive, at all costs.
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Favorable
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The Independent Mark Bostridge
This diary of the sacking of a once great city is both an important work of social history and a remarkable human document.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
A Woman in Berlin... should be embraced for the reason it was initially faulted. Its frank documentation of German suffering -- the hunger and uncertainty as well as the widespread rape -- illuminates a subject whose worldwide taboo is just beginning to subside.
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