Nagorski, Andrew 1947-

views updated

Nagorski, Andrew 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born May 3, 1947, in Edinburgh, Scotland; immigrated to United States; son of Zygmunt and Marie Nagorski; married; wife's name Christina; children: Eva, Sonia, Adam, Alex. Education: Attended University of Cracow, 1968-69; Amherst College, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1969.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Newsweek, 251 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Journalist. Wayland High School, Wayland, MA, teacher of social studies, 1969-73; Newsweek International, New York, NY, associate editor, writer, and reporter, 1973-76, general editor, 1976-77, assistant managing editor, 1977-78, Asian regional editor, Hong Kong, 1978-80, based in Moscow, Russia, Rome, Italy, and Bonn, Germany, 1980s, Warsaw, Poland, 1990-94, Moscow, 1995-96, Berlin bureau chief, Berlin, Germany, 1996-99, senior editor, New York, 2000—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Overseas Press Club citation for best magazine reporting from abroad, 1974, for cover story "Black Africa Moves South," and award for best business reporting from abroad, 1978, for cover story "Japan vs. the World"; finalist for Los Angeles Times Book Award, 2008.

WRITINGS:

Reluctant Farewell, Holt, Rinehart & Winston (New York, NY), 1985.

The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1993.

Last Stop Vienna: A Novel, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to Africa and the United States: Vital Interests, edited by Jennifer S. Whitaker, New York University Press, 1978.

SIDELIGHTS:

During his long career with Newsweek, Andrew Nagorski has had many notable assignments, including dozens of cover stories on subjects that range from oil diplomacy to the rise of African nationalism. His intimacy with the history, people, and politics of Europe comes to the fore in his writings, including his first volume, Reluctant Farewell. As Norman Stone noted in the National Interest, Nagorski "knew the old Soviet Union and wrote one of the very few good journalistic books about it." Of Nagorski's The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe, Stone commented that he "describes emancipated Eastern Europe, and he nods approvingly all the way. Civil society recovers, the free market works its miracles (they do seem miraculous in Poland, with her booming stock exchange), new democratic parties come into existence, and serious efforts are made to repair the ecological and other damages of the past. The book is quite valuable, in that it gives a blow-by-blow account of political life since 1989."

Insight on the News contributor Arnold Beichman wrote that after reading Nagorski's "superb reportage … I am convinced that, amid the unending sanguinary horrors of the former Yugoslavia, the most heartening event of post-Cold War Eastern Europe after decades of socialist central planning is the peaceful transformation of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into stumbling yet flowering, market-oriented democracies." A Publishers Weekly critic called Nagorski "an extremely knowledgeable, perceptive, informative guide through post-communist Mitteleuropa."

Nagorski began writing Last Stop Vienna: A Novel, while he was reporting in Germany. He found his inspiration in the old haunts of Hitler and in his papers and books, and the idea for the story formed while Nagorski was on a historical tour of Munich, where Hitler found his first recruits. The protagonist is Karl Naumann, who enters the folds of the National Socialist Party and rises to become a leader in the Youth Corps. He marries Sabine, a nurse, but as he falls under Hitler's spell, he also becomes smitten with his leader's niece, Geli Raubal, who is bound to acquiesce to her uncle's erotic demands. A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that the novel "offers a fascinating account of the power struggles between Hitler and rival Nazi leaders, but focuses primarily on the small events and individual actions that lay the foundation for Nazi rule."

Described in the Wall Street Journal as an "enthralling" history, The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II draws on the personal recollections of many participants in its account of the battle for Moscow that ensued after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1941. As the book's subtitle makes clear, Nagorski considers this engagement the greatest battle of the war. Some seven million Soviet and German soldiers took part in the fighting, which resulted in approximately 2.5 million casualties or prisoners of war; of these, the larger portion were Soviet soldiers. The invasion shocked Stalin, who had refused to believe that Hitler would violate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact guaranteeing peace between the two countries. The Soviet leader, fearing defeat as German troops pushed farther into the country, retreated to his dacha outside the capital city—an act that further demoralized Moscow's inhabitants. As the Germans reached the outskirts of the capital, however, Stalin rallied and—as Nagorski argues—bullied the Russians into mounting an all-out defense. Hitler's troops, by that time exposed to the brutal Russian winter without adequate clothing or supplies, succumbed to frostbite and hunger as well as battlefield injuries. The Soviet victory was a turning point, argues Nagorski, because it was the first indication that the Nazi war machine—previously undefeated—could be stopped.

Hugh Barnes, writing in the Moscow Times, observed that Nagorski "brings a journalistic urgency to his narrative, eschewing the wealth of new material in Russian archives … in favor of interviews with survivors and their families that tell the story in a fresh and readable way." Further, added Barnes, The Greatest Battle challenges the official Soviet view that "the Russian people never wavered in their fight against the German invaders, even when the outlook was grim…. [Nagorski] suggests that Stalin's own unpredictability as much as the proverbial stoicism of the Russian people held the key. His volatile temperament recovered from the dark days of midsummer to galvanize, or perhaps terrorize, the nation into a heroic resistance. The Battle of Moscow helped Stalin to work out a strategy by which the sacrifice of millions of lives made up for the inadequate weaponry and equipment of the Red Army." The Greatest Battle is not only "fine diplomatic history," wrote Washington Post Book World critic Constantine Pleshakov, but also a "triumph" in its insistence that survivors' voices be heard.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Insight on the News, October 18, 1993, Arnold Beichman, review of The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe, p. 35.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2002, review of Last Stop Vienna: A Novel, p. 1560.

National Interest, winter, 1993, Norman Stone, review of The Birth of Freedom, p. 91.

Newsweek, January 13, 2003, Susannah Meadows, review of Last Stop Vienna, p. 60.

New York Times Book Review, October 13, 1985, Anthony Austin, review of Reluctant Farewell, p. 25; May 3, 1987, Patricia T. O'Connor, review of Reluctant Farewell, p. 41; October 10, 1993, Abraham Brumberg, review of The Birth of Freedom, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, July 26, 1993, review of The Birth of Freedom, p. 50; November 4, 2002, review of Last Stop Vienna, p. 58.

Tribune Books, February 9, 2003, review of Last Stop Vienna, p. 5.

Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2008, review of The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II, p. W6.

Washington Post Book World, October 14, 2007, Constantine Pleshakov, "Victory of Steel and Ice," p. 9.

Wilson Quarterly, spring, 1994, Vladimir Tismaneanu, review of The Birth of Freedom, p. 77.