Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker
Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker
List: $21.99 | Sale: $15.39
Club: $10.99

Human Smoke
The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Author: Nicholson Baker

Narrator: Norman Dietz

Unabridged: 14 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/04/2008

Synopsis

Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources—including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries—the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.

Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.

About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and five works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hermann Hesse Prize, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano; both his children went to Maine public schools.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on September 05, 2017

Imagine a history of World War II that dispensed with all the mythical afterglow and self-congratulatory propaganda and instead relied on contemporaneous newspaper articles and documents to build a fine-grained portrait of leaders and events. It's an attempt at objectivity, to be sure, but Baker isn......more

Goodreads review by Brad on August 24, 2012

Human Smoke is many things, I think. Nicholson Baker himself intended it as a memorial to “Charles Pickett and other American and British pacifists. They’ve never really gotten their due. They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from hap......more

Goodreads review by Jon on August 05, 2022

A tapestry wove in hell and draped over the world. My friends often ask me why I read so many books on Nazism. I tell them that it is because we still have to learn the lessons that we did not learn: lessons that seem to be ignored more and more everyday - lessons that we need to learn if we are to......more

Goodreads review by David on June 11, 2008

A collection of vignettes — some only a paragraph long, few longer than a page — of episodes from the years leading up to the second World War, and then from the years of the war itself up through 1941. Baker mostly leaves his own voice out of it, except for a few paragraphs of “afterword” at the en......more

Goodreads review by Ed on March 25, 2008

An earth shattering book. Baker takes everything you know about the run up to World War II and stands it all on its head. I haven't had a book haunt me like this in a long time. Everything I know is wrong. Roosevelt knew about the Japanese navy moving toward Pearl Harbor. Winston Churchill did all he......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List