pasternakski
Posts: 6565
Joined: 6/29/2002 Status: offline
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The mere mention of this series was enough to make me pull out my tried-and-true copy of Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." One early passage: "What ... had [Hitler] learned in the school of those hard knocks which Vienna had so generously provided? What were the ideas which he acquired there from his reading and his experience and which, as he says, would remain essentially unaltered to the end? That they were mostly shallow and shabby, often grotesque and preposterous, and poisoned by outlandish prejudices will become obvious on the most cursory examination. That they are important to this history, as they were to the world, is equally obvious, for they were to form part of the foundation for the Third Reich which this bookish vagrant was soon to build." It's not often that journalistic writing absorbs you to the point where it is impossible to put it down, but Shirer's combined artistry and direct narrative style are irresistible. When words like these are available, why would one watch television? "Bookish vagrant." Brevity is the soul of wit.
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Put my faith in the people And the people let me down. So, I turned the other way, And I carry on anyhow.
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