Epstein, Catherine 1962-

views updated

Epstein, Catherine 1962-
(Catherine A. Epstein)

PERSONAL:

Born January 27, 1962, in Provdidence, RI; married, 1995; children: two. Education: Brown University, B.A., 1985; London School of Economics, M.S., 1987; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Amherst College, P.O. Box 2254, Amherst, MA 01002-5000. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, visiting lecturer, 1998-99; Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, visiting assistant professor, 1999-2000; Amherst College, Amherst, MA, assistant professor of history, 2000—.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, German Studies Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright scholarship, 1985-86; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship, 1994-95; American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, 1995-96; Whiting fellowship, 1996-97.

WRITINGS:

A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking Historians in the United States after 1933, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Catherine Epstein's The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century offers intertwined biographical sketches of eight East German communists, some of whose careers stretched from the days of the Weimar Republic to the fall of communist East Germany in 1989. "Ms. Epstein has succeeded admirably in lifting the veil, or should one say curtain, that hitherto has shrouded the lives and philosophy of these seven men and one woman," remarked Douglas Hill in Biography. Hill went on to praise The Last Revolutionaries as "a well-researched study of an important period. Catherine Epstein's presentation is clear and mercifully free of academic jargon, a pleasure to read. She writes with insight and authority, and her book is to be recommended to a wide audience." Library Journal correspondent Thomas A. Karel likewise deemed The Last Revolutionaries "a revealing and readable account of an important aspect of modern European history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Reference Books Annual, 1994, review of A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking Historians in the United States after 1933, pp. 166-167.

Biography, fall, 2003, Douglas Hill, review of The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century, p. 774.

Library Journal, March 15, 2003, Thomas A. Karel, review of The Last Revolutionaries, p. 96.