Fascinating & Disturbing

Finished reading Mark Braude's The Typewriter and the Guillotine last night. A very interesting take on life in France both before and during WWII as told through the lives of a journalist, Janet Flanner, and, rather shockingly, a serial killer, Eugen Weidmann. As fascinating as it is disturbing. 

Orgeval - Bordeaux

  

In Braude's The Typewriter and the Guillotine, Janet Flanner flees Paris to Orgeval (marked), then to the port city of Bordeaux, hoping there to catch a ship back to the United States.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

Spotted this in my local bookstore and wondered if I might also find it in my public library. Huzzah! It was there and, better yet, available, perhaps because it was first published in 2021. 

Totalitarianism

It happened. (From Mark Baude's The Typewriter and the Guillotine) 

Hitler

"Her [Janet Flanner's] harshest criticism was that Hitler 'has mystical tendencies, no common sense, and a Wagnerian taste for heroics and death. He was born loaded with vanities andhas developed megalomania as his final decoration.'" - Mark Braude, The Typewriter and the Guillotine

Indians

 

  

"Fighting Indians provided a considerable amount of the United States' early nineteenth-century military experience, and much of that activity occurred during the Pierce years."

The Typewriter and the Guillotine

Brutal and gruesome opening chapter, so I had to temporarily put it down. Subsequent chapters, however, have kept me coming back for more.