Reviews

An Amazon Editors’ Choice — Best Book of the Month (History)

“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

“A poignant portrait . . . Wolff skillfully contextualizes his father’s and grandfather’s tales with military and political history . . . History buffs and literary enthusiasts will be rewarded.”

—Publishers Weekly, Top 10 for History, Spring 2021

“Alexander Wolff is keen, after a generation of silence, to follow the untold stories wherever they might lead. . . . In the end, Wolff offers the words of Umberto Eco: ‘Those things about which we cannot theorize . . . we must narrate.’ To bring stories into the light, to render their humanity, is our best hope.”

—Claire Messud, Harper’s

“Revelatory, riveting, and deeply moving . . . Endpapers is a kind of reckoning: an exploration of the author’s family’s bargains with the Nazis, a reflection on inherited guilt and its imperatives, and a contemplation of the ways that postwar Germans have attempted to expiate the horrific deeds and moral blindness of their elders.”

—Joshua Hammer, New York Review of Books

“Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Endpapers, at its heart, is an absorbing family history. But it is so much more than that, it is a haunting exploration of guilt and responsibility, of roots and new beginnings. Filled with stunning literary details that any bibliophile will cherish, this is an intimate and complex portrait of a remarkable family that also tells a wider story of Europe and America in the twentieth century. Endpapers is a treasure—a brave and moving book.”

—Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains

“Alexander Wolff—a writer of superb grace—traces a complex and compelling family history in this deeply absorbing narrative of high culture under threat, of political and moral violence, and the deep wish for what Wolff refers to as Heimkehr or ‘homecoming.’ Endpapers held me in its spell for days.”

—Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me: An Encounter

“Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, the two greatest émigré writers, both fled America. So did the greatest of émigré publishers, Kurt Wolff, universally regarded as the class act of his industry. In a compelling, frequently thrilling, and—if you have an ear for the biting tone of Hitler’s exiles—often hilarious book, Alexander Wolff combines biography, memoir, and cultural history, rendering them indivisible, and making clear the uncanny and terrifying parallels between Kurt Wolff’s day and ours.”

—Anthony Heilbut, author of Exiled in Paradise and Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature

“A stunning and brave book, deep and absorbing. I was enraptured by the story of Kurt, Niko, and Alex as they moved through the crosswinds of the twentieth century, from Munich to Princeton, and into the modern world.”

—David Maraniss, author of A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father

“Remarkable lives in extraordinary times—a gripping and exceptional literary journey.”

—Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Ratline

“An astonishing, compelling, confronting story of a divided family, reaching sharply into the present.”

—Tim Bonyhady, author of Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900

“Alexander Wolff turns inward with this deeply personal story about family and book publishing. . . . An affecting, emotional, and sometimes harrowing saga.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A tapestry of exile and complicity . . . Wolff’s inquiry focuses upon gregarious and cultured Kurt, who left many letters but also some secrets; and complex, taciturn Niko, whose inner life was a mystery. In doing so, Wolff reveals a broader fascination with the relationship between historical events and personal trajectories.”

—Booklist

“Engrossing . . . fascinating . . . The author delves deeply into his ancestry to unravel the complex stories of his multigenerational family, and to show how his father’s and grandfather’s traumatic lives affected him.”

—Library Journal

“No serious reader will be less than wowed by Alexander Wolff’s Endpapers. The author, constructing a fascinating story of family, comes to grips with three different lives: that of his grandfather, publisher Kurt Wolff; his father, Niko, a reluctant soldier in World War II; and himself, interwoven with the others. Endpapers is personal history that serves the public well.”

—Laura Claridge, author of The Lady with the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker Extraordinaire

“An event-filled biography and, along the way, a captivating case study in the challenges faced by refugees attempting to remake a life. . . . Not content with registering the tectonic shifts of the times, Kurt Wolff brought about convulsions of his own, shaking up the American postwar literary scene. His grandson’s book, as enlightening as it is engaging, measures the effects.”

—Benjamin Balint, The Wall Street Journal

“Wolff’s year of research is chronicled beautifully in Endpapers . . . he powerfully uses the present to lace together the biographies of his father and paternal grandfather. . . . Endpapers is more than a book of history; it’s a transnational, intergenerational reckoning.”

—Shuchi Saraswat, The Boston Globe

“As riveting as the fiction the Wolffs themselves have published, and deeply affecting.”

—Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek, Spring 2021, 21 Best Books to Read

“A thoroughly captivating book . . . an extraordinary look at the intellectual milieu of 20th century German literary culture and its collision with the historical upheavals of the first half of the century. Wolff continues the story postwar, delving into the complexities of how those upheavals play out in the dynamics of his own family.”

—Dale Szczeblowski, Porter Square Books (Cambridge, Mass.), Staff Pick for March 2021

“To read the story of the Wolff family is to wake to the need for a fuller understanding of the human condition. Everyone has a story. . . . Not everyone’s story is as replete with famous names as the Wolffs’ story is, but each is a human story worthy of the respect that is trammeled by movements that elevate one race or nationality over another.”

—David Moats, VTDigger.org

“Compelling . . . unflinching . . . Alexander Wolff exposes in his ancestors’ experiences the common thread. It is the barest, most basic definition of purpose in life, neither noble nor subhuman: survival.”

—Robert Siegel, Moment

“A fascinating mixture of memoir, journalism, history and an up-close look at one family’s complicated relationship with Nazi Germany. . . . Endpapers is not only the gripping story of one family’s history, but an important exploration of responsibility.”

—Pamela Toler, Shelf Awareness

“[Wolff] knows how to crisply punch out ideas and tell engrossing stories. . . . This is a finely blended package of knowledge gleaned from family history, interviews with near and distant relatives, and government records and archival sources. . . . [Wolff has] done his family justice. Maybe rough justice, but still, justice.”

—Douglas Johnston, Winnipeg Free Press

“Wolff’s journalistic skills and meticulous, stubborn research have opened up fascinating historical veins surrounding and preceding his progenitors. . . . Endpapers is an invaluable gift to literature, mainly but not only for the quotations, details, and beguilingly written scenes of publisher Kurt Wolff’s life scattered throughout.”

—Kai Maristed, The Arts Fuse

“An amazing family saga.”

—Jeff Jarvis, Buzz Machine and founding editor, Entertainment Weekly

“Does brilliant justice not only to [the] story [of Kurt and Helen Wolff] but to the tale of his own father, who had stayed behind in Germany and served in its army. Beautifully written and empathetic to its core, Endpapers deserves the highest compliment possible: it might as well have been published under the imprint of a Kurt and Helen Wolff book.”

—Air Mail, Book Report

“Alexander Wolff does more than chronicle his father and grandfather’s lives; he explores the immigrant experience, grapples with issues that include German guilt and responsibility, assesses Germany today, and discerns what his American and German roots mean to him. . . . He searches for his own version of historical reckoning in a most readable and engaging style.”

—Gila Wertheimer, JewishBookCouncil.org

“A panorama of the modern history which connects America and Germany from two wars to the present day. . . . [The author has] a gift for giving familiar historical facts a fresh approach.”

—J. Kemper Campbell, Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star

“Poignant, dramatic and often humorous, it’s the longtime Sports Illustrated scribe’s most moving work and deserves a place on your nightstand.”

—Dan Bolles, Seven Days (Vermont)

“Cinematographic . . . Tremendously well-written . . . Kudos to the author for crafting each sentence, and for collecting and culling so much research. A family story that has universal relevance that we can all learn from.”

—John Julius Reel, Book Rants

“A book . . . about emigrants, and those left behind, and the war that divided them. A family story as captivating and moving as a novel.”

—Wiebke Hollersen, Berliner Zeitung

“Alexander Wolff traces the lives of his grandfather and father in a relaxed narrative voice and describes in parallel broad sweeping arcs of history. . . . Purists may hold against Wolff his great asset as a writer, which could inspire younger readers in particular: He has mastered the art of storytelling in a brisk, colloquial style. . . . Such is how biographical stories can become meaningful testimonies of contemporary history–in an understandable, completely non-academic way.”

—Peter Claus, Die Rheinpfalz (Leverkusen)

“Lives are rendered sensitively and personally, which makes for a very accessible and easy-to-read book. . . . Wolff tells everything: how his view of Germany changed in the course of writing, and how he finally reconciled in a way with the country of his fathers, a place he previously had only a vague sense of. His grandfather Kurt Wolff had to leave Germany. His father Niko wanted to leave Germany. And Alexander closes the circle with this book. It’s very touching, and builds a beautiful bridge over the Atlantic.”

—Bettina Baltschev, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk

“Alexander Wolff spent a year in Germany researching this unbelievable, sometimes very harrowing and thrilling family history, to write it up with a personal touch–yet at the same time to set it in its proper historical context.”

—Neue Presse (Hannover)

“[Alexander Wolff] wanted to know more. So he did something crazy: he took a buyout from his magazine job—he was a full-time reporter at Sports Illustrated—and moved with his wife and two children from Vermont to Berlin-Kreuzberg. There he hit the archives, found relatives, scaled the remotest branches of his family tree. His Cicerone: the historian Timothy Snyder, whose book Bloodlands served as a kind of compass. During his research he discovered all kinds of things—for example, a noble ancestor and convert to Christianity who defended his Jewish honor in a duel (victoriously!). But also a great aunt who palled around with the Himmlers. . . . Upon returning home, Alexander sat down and wrote a book: a family saga framed by autobiographical reportage.”

—Hannes Stein, Die Welt

“Nothing less than a European-American cultural, exile, and Jewish family history. . .. What’s impressive about Endpapers is how it ranges widely across the historical and cultural horizon. It never strays from succinctly describing the character of various [members of Wolff’s family] and relating their fate, and subtly intersperses reflections on the present day. Amidst all this, the book offers a sensitive look at the ambivalences and contradictions that those characters had to confront as a result of the circumstances of their times, yet also renders judgments on events and family members’ conduct.”

—Erhard Schütz, Der Freitag (Berlin), “Factually Accurate: On nonfiction you should absolutely read”

“Fascinating . . . [The author] sees himself bound by fate to both those who were murdered or expelled from their homeland, and to perpetrators who, as part of the German army, facilitated murders all over Europe, or—like an aunt from the Merck family—befriended Himmler . . ..”

—Holger Böning, Jüdische Allgemeine (Berlin)

“A first-person exploration of the pasts of the author’s father and grandfather, two descendants of Jews who lived through Hitler’s Germany. . . . For Wolff, this was a difficult but necessary book to write.”

—Jan Mompin, La Vanguardia (Barcelona), “Book of the Day”

“A minute, precise reconstruction full of intelligence, humor, and love for culture, as well as a compulsive need to understand, including atoning for the complicated and at times guilty world of his ancestors. . . . A book valid for historians, because it uncovers the interconnected history of a turbulent time; and equally interesting for lovers of literature and the arts, because it’s dedicated to rediscovering the multifaceted nature of the human soul. A true revelation.”

—Salvador Gómez Valdés, “La Aventura del Saber,” RTVE (Spain)

“Wolff spent a year in Berlin investigating, and that immersion in family history coincided with the reappearance of populist nationalism in Germany and with it coming to power in the United States. It was time to review the old ghosts to ask questions of the present. . . . This account of his research . . . is another great story, about the vital and professional evolution of the Jews of Central Europe, but with two ramifications that make it unique: [Wolff’s father] stayed in Germany and was part of the Nazi Army, while [his grandfather], the publisher [Kurt] Wolff, left the country with his second wife, taking with him the memory of one of the essential literary legacies of the European twentieth century. This tension between grandfather and father is manifested in the climactic passage of an excellent book: an exchange of letters between Kurt and his daughter about the Allied bombing of the German civilian population, and about individual and collective responsibility.”

—Jordi Amat, El País (Madrid)

“A book of perfect narrative form that surprises in the research methodology it relies upon. With elements of the biopic and autobiographical fiction at his disposal, it would have been easy for Wolff to take us on a classic inner journey, to uncover old ghosts hidden within himself. Nothing could be further from the truth. He steers clear of cliché, of describing trauma theoretically, of inventing the past . . .. He’s intent on something altogether different: confronting his family’s history by going to his own sources, to the archives.”

—Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, El Mundo (Madrid)

“[Wolff’s] attempt to work off the past led him to stir up his family’s history and . . . to wonder, in a mixture of shame, guilt and possible responsibility, what positions his ancestors adopted, with whom they aligned themselves . . .. While researching the story he remained sensitive to the rise of racist and xenophobic policies on both sides of the ocean . . .. The book becomes, beyond a family portrait, an exploration of such issues as escape, exile, refuge, and the corresponding emotions felt by those who feature as protagonists in such matters . . .. The genre Wolff uses is halfway between essay and narrative . . . with the photographs that accompany the text functioning as in the work of W. G. Sebald . . ..”

—Iñaki Urdanibia, La Nueve (Spain)

“The author’s grandfather, partially demystified in these pages, is key to the story, in particular his half-dozen years’ odyssey after escaping the German capital in 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire . . . to read Endpapers today gives meaning to the term ‘tortured country.’”

—Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, La Vanguardia (Barcelona)

“A special book. . . . It features many pictures as well as this extraordinary history of Europe.”

—Carles Francino, “La Ventana,” Radio Cadena SER (Madrid)

“In Robert Fass’s skillful narration, this combination of family memoir and investigative journalism fascinates on many levels. . . . Fass’s accurate, sensitive, and well-paced performance makes this tale penetrating and memorable.”

—AudioFile (on the Tantor audiobook)