IN THE GRIP OF THE NAZI PAST
This review, by Alan Brinkley, of the third volume of William Shirer's autobiography A Native's Return, 1945-1988, appeared in the New York Times Jan. 21, 1990
Much of this new memoir consists of meditations on the great evil he had witnessed in his youth, the enormity of which he still cannot fully comprehend.
...
He gives a somewhat embarrassing description of his extramarital affairs and a painful account of the breakup of his long marriage (although he seems to draw only a faint connection between the two). ...
Here, as in the earlier memoirs, Mr. Shirer is generally reticent about revealing much of his own inner life. ...
In many ways, Mr. Shirer has remained throughout his life...a writer who has never offered much of an interpretation of the great events he has described, but has viewed them through the prism of his own basic decency and apparent innocence. He has responded to the great evils he has witnessed in the 20th century with a simple and in many ways appealing bewilderment, as things to be carefully and patiently chronicled but never to be truly understood.
''Whatever happens now, and whenever,'' Mr. Shirer writes at the close of this book, contemplating the end of his long and eventful life, ''I am glad to have lived through the turbulent, tumultuous twentieth century.'' The millions of readers who have found in his many books a compelling picture (even if seldom a compelling explanation) of some of the century's great events have reason to be glad of that as well.
He gives a somewhat embarrassing description of his extramarital affairs and a painful account of the breakup of his long marriage (although he seems to draw only a faint connection between the two). ...
Here, as in the earlier memoirs, Mr. Shirer is generally reticent about revealing much of his own inner life. ...
In many ways, Mr. Shirer has remained throughout his life...a writer who has never offered much of an interpretation of the great events he has described, but has viewed them through the prism of his own basic decency and apparent innocence. He has responded to the great evils he has witnessed in the 20th century with a simple and in many ways appealing bewilderment, as things to be carefully and patiently chronicled but never to be truly understood.
''Whatever happens now, and whenever,'' Mr. Shirer writes at the close of this book, contemplating the end of his long and eventful life, ''I am glad to have lived through the turbulent, tumultuous twentieth century.'' The millions of readers who have found in his many books a compelling picture (even if seldom a compelling explanation) of some of the century's great events have reason to be glad of that as well.
