A sweeping portrait of the turmoil of the twentieth century and the legacy of immigration, as seen through the German-American family of the celebrated book publisher Kurt Wolff
Finalist for the Vermont Book Award
Endpapers
I spent a year in Berlin exploring the lives of my grandfather and father—Kurt Wolff, dubbed “perhaps the twentieth century’s most discriminating publisher” by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America.
Endpapers tells of the journeys of these two German-born men turned American citizens, and my own quest to make sense of their stories amidst rising rightist populism on both sides of the Atlantic.
Praise for Endpapers
“A powerfully told story of family, honor, love, and truth, by a masterful writer who sees across the oceans and through the generations. In Endpapers we see the Wolff family through war and love, detention camps and immigration hearings, kindness and betrayal, occupying a world equal parts Casablanca and Kafka. It is engrossing and entertaining, a book of conscience and remembrance that tells the beautiful truth that so often those who contribute most to the culture and civic life of a place are the outcast and the refugee.”
—Beto O’Rourke
Other Work
The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama
With five main essays, fifteen sidebars, an illustrated timeline, and more than 125 images, many from the lens of White House photographer Pete Souza, The Audacity of Hoop looks at Barack Obama, person and president, by the light of the game most closely associated with him.
Alexander Wolff
Journalist / Author / Editor
After 36 years as a writer for Sports Illustrated, I now work out of a converted cow barn in Vermont’s Champlain Valley, mostly writing and editing books. I love to interact with readers, collaborate on events with bookstores, book clubs, libraries, and festivals, and otherwise affirm and spread literary culture. Books are in the family blood. And I enjoy talking with anyone about writing and the writing life, as well as that sweet spot where sports and society overlap.