The Long Night

May 2, 2011
The accomplishments of acclaimed American journalist William Shirer are celebrated in Wick's latest book, which faithfully tracks the ambitious writer's Midwest origins to his Chicago Tribune reporting apprenticeship and landing a plum job as the workhorse of Edward Murrow's CBS News bureau in 1933 Berlin. Wick, a Pulitzer-winning staffer at Newsday, uses unpublished letters and journals, showing the dogged Shirer, uneasy in the new Germany, wary of the rise of the National Socialists with their swastikas, heated rhetoric, rigid social codes, and treatment of Jews. Shirer, realizing that he was witnessing a historic event in the corruption of a nation by Hitler and his cronies, risked the ire of Nazi officials watching for a wrong move. He "ask the wrong question, the wrong story, to the wrong people," even if that meant risking deportation. After his hasty exit in 1940 (both personally and professionally depleted), Shirer collected his reportage, captured Third Reich documents, and Nuremburg trial testimony to form The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which won the 1961 National Book Award. Wick (Bad Company: Drugs, Hollywood and the Cotton Club Murder) offers an absorbing and very detailed account, the perfect companion piece to Shirer's masterwork.

May 15, 2011

In a trenchant discussion of journalism, biography and ethics, Newsday senior editor Wick (Bad Company: Drugs, Hollywood and the Cotton Club Murder, 1990, etc.) examines the life of William Shirer (1904–1993), American war correspondent and author of the landmark book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960).

The author is very much attuned to the conflicts and difficulties of a journalist like Shirer working in a police state. Wick asks what more he might have done, and discusses Shirer's concerns about getting stories published in New York, where he thought "no one...paid much attention." Shirer's knowledge only part of the story. He endured both the German government's lies and the corporate concerns of CBS, and he had to act on this partial and contradictory knowledge, not the fuller truth now available. He also had to protect his sources. His transmissions were monitored by Nazi spies in the United States who reported back with recommendations for action against him. It was a major undertaking for him to get his diaries and personal papers out of Hitler's Germany when he left in 1940. The papers eventually provided the necessary documentation for the influential books he later wrote about Hitler's rise to power and the Third Reich. As one of the first broadcast journalists, Shirer was breaking new ground with his nightly transmissions. Unfortunately, we will never know his full story because he protected his sources and burned sensitive papers before he left.

A gripping account of a courageous journalist's efforts to alert the world to Hitler's plan, and an engaging discussion of the relationship between journalism and personal integrity, which is as relevant today as it was then.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011

The drama and tension of covering Europe during Hitler's rise to power comes to life in this account of William Shirer's early career. Wick (senior editor, Newsday) draws on Shirer's diaries and letters to detail his thoughts and actions as he headed for Paris in 1925 to begin his journalism career. Framed as an adventure story, the book engages readers with an insider's view of Shirer's work and personal life, first with the Chicago Tribune, then with Hearst, and finally partnering with Edward R. Murrow to establish CBS radio news. Shirer was stationed in Paris, Vienna, India, and Berlin, and he knew or covered some of the best-known people of the era. Wick acknowledges the challenges of covering the Nazis under the watchful eye of German government censors but raises questions about whether journalists did enough to inform the world about the Nazi menace. He highlights a Jewish acquaintance of Shirer who sought his assistance in escaping Austria and whose fate is unknown. VERDICT Readers interested in Europe at the beginning of World War II or journalism history will be quickly drawn into this well-written book, which raises important questions about journalism that have resonance today.--Judy Solberg, Seattle Univ. Lib.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.