The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Family - Tapa dura

A superbly written book, The Eitingons is much more than a family history, for the author has a deep knowledge of the cultural and political context, whether of twentieth-century America or the Soviet Union, in which they lived. It stands as an intimate portrait of a world that seems far removed from our own. The Eitingons is a riveting history of the twentieth century. It deals with war, displacement, murder, espionage, the Jewish diaspora and psychoanalysis. It explains Trotsky s assassination, the growth of Freud s teachings, the importance of the fur trade, the uses of money and the lure of the past. There is a lightness and a truthfulness in the narrative that makes you turn every page with pure fascination.--Colm Toibin Wilmers pieces together what she can of the shadowy life of Leonid Eitingon, a high-level KGB killer and looks for clues that her grandfather s cousin Max, a protege of Freud in Berlin, and Motty, a New York fur trader, were also working for Stalin. What emerges is a fascinating story of family secrets and silences. Unlike the hordes of amateur historians who have mobbed the world's libraries over the past decade on the theory that reconstructing lineage equates to personal discovery, Wilmers is up to something that commands general attention.--Christopher Glazek [A] chatty and often engaging group biography.