realized that the epiphanies of the writers he admired, and the epiphanies of the men and women who were creating the technological and scientific structures of the world, had been possible due to the same combination of
social freedom and individual discipline. He saw that scientific work could also be creative work, that the two were not as distinct as they seemed. In fact, traces of both could even be found in the time capsule of the Fair, which included, among other things, a new invention called the wristwatch, a fountain pen, a sampling of alloys, various pieces of industrial machinery, articles on philosophy and economics, and the books of Thomas Mann.
During the evenings at the Fair in 1939, there were often fireworks exploding into the sultry night sky. Perhaps Bill stayedaround after work to watch them sometimes, or to gaze at the glowing fountains of water that were also a popular attraction. And maybe Evelyn, who was now his wife, joined him there some nights. Bill had followed his heart and asked Evelyn to marry him, and she’d said yes. They found the pull between them too strong to
deny, but getting married had not been an easy decision. Relations with Bill’s family had been very tense. They’d hoped the situation would sort itself out with time. It didn’t. In fact, it got worse. Upon hearing of Bill’s marriage, his mother exercised her immense sway over Bill’s father and demanded the ultimate: Her husband had to follow the traditional Orthodox rules and declare their youngest son dead.
It was the beginning of some hard years for Bill. Leaving his job at the distiller’s to work with Whalen, Bill probably imagined great things would soon follow, but nothing materialized. Once Whalen’s work at the World’s Fair was over, Bill found himself thirty years old, disowned by his parents, newly married, and without a job. Evelyn was still working at Schenley and hers would be their only income for nearly a year. Watching months and months
pass, in his desperation (and naïveté) Bill finally took a job with a mobster organization that was not very safe. When his boss at Schenley heard about this from Evelyn, he realized how strapped Bill must have been. He told Evelyn that the two of them should have spoken up about their situation. Shortly after, he arranged for Bill to go and talk with a man named William H. Weintraub. Mr. Weintraub was in the advertising business. And soon, so was Bill.
Hitler: Our last hope. 1 That’s the message of one earnest German poster from 1932, its drawings purposely dim, chalk-rendered, sorrowful: Half a dozen faces, the People, stare out in desperation,their skin and bodies yellow, smudged, thin. How did so many Germans come to think of
Adolf Hitler as their last hope? And how did Adolf Hitler get so many people to believe in him?
Julius Caesar was apparently the first person to refer to the area of Europe beyond the Danube and the Rhine as Germania. Today the word
Germania
can have a distinctively Nazi flair—having been the name of Albert Speer’s architectural model of the projected “World Capital” of Berlin, as well as of an SS regiment during the Second World War—but in 1900, it was a reference to a time when indigenous German-speaking people lived
in small communities and had a strong connection to the land, an era that would become mythologized as the pure-blooded foundation of the German nation, though no “pure-blooded” foundation actually exists.
In large part, this idea had grown out of the writings of the Roman orator Tacitus: His work,
Germania,
was the first study of the natives of what is now Germany, and while it was brief and often used rather exalted terms to describe the characteristics of the native population, its overall conclusions would be passed down through the generations, still prevalent many hundreds of years later when German-speaking kingdoms finally did indeed become a legal nation
in 1871. In that year, the German
social freedom and individual discipline. He saw that scientific work could also be creative work, that the two were not as distinct as they seemed. In fact, traces of both could even be found in the time capsule of the Fair, which included, among other things, a new invention called the wristwatch, a fountain pen, a sampling of alloys, various pieces of industrial machinery, articles on philosophy and economics, and the books of Thomas Mann.
During the evenings at the Fair in 1939, there were often fireworks exploding into the sultry night sky. Perhaps Bill stayedaround after work to watch them sometimes, or to gaze at the glowing fountains of water that were also a popular attraction. And maybe Evelyn, who was now his wife, joined him there some nights. Bill had followed his heart and asked Evelyn to marry him, and she’d said yes. They found the pull between them too strong to
deny, but getting married had not been an easy decision. Relations with Bill’s family had been very tense. They’d hoped the situation would sort itself out with time. It didn’t. In fact, it got worse. Upon hearing of Bill’s marriage, his mother exercised her immense sway over Bill’s father and demanded the ultimate: Her husband had to follow the traditional Orthodox rules and declare their youngest son dead.
It was the beginning of some hard years for Bill. Leaving his job at the distiller’s to work with Whalen, Bill probably imagined great things would soon follow, but nothing materialized. Once Whalen’s work at the World’s Fair was over, Bill found himself thirty years old, disowned by his parents, newly married, and without a job. Evelyn was still working at Schenley and hers would be their only income for nearly a year. Watching months and months
pass, in his desperation (and naïveté) Bill finally took a job with a mobster organization that was not very safe. When his boss at Schenley heard about this from Evelyn, he realized how strapped Bill must have been. He told Evelyn that the two of them should have spoken up about their situation. Shortly after, he arranged for Bill to go and talk with a man named William H. Weintraub. Mr. Weintraub was in the advertising business. And soon, so was Bill.
Hitler: Our last hope. 1 That’s the message of one earnest German poster from 1932, its drawings purposely dim, chalk-rendered, sorrowful: Half a dozen faces, the People, stare out in desperation,their skin and bodies yellow, smudged, thin. How did so many Germans come to think of
Adolf Hitler as their last hope? And how did Adolf Hitler get so many people to believe in him?
Julius Caesar was apparently the first person to refer to the area of Europe beyond the Danube and the Rhine as Germania. Today the word
Germania
can have a distinctively Nazi flair—having been the name of Albert Speer’s architectural model of the projected “World Capital” of Berlin, as well as of an SS regiment during the Second World War—but in 1900, it was a reference to a time when indigenous German-speaking people lived
in small communities and had a strong connection to the land, an era that would become mythologized as the pure-blooded foundation of the German nation, though no “pure-blooded” foundation actually exists.
In large part, this idea had grown out of the writings of the Roman orator Tacitus: His work,
Germania,
was the first study of the natives of what is now Germany, and while it was brief and often used rather exalted terms to describe the characteristics of the native population, its overall conclusions would be passed down through the generations, still prevalent many hundreds of years later when German-speaking kingdoms finally did indeed become a legal nation
in 1871. In that year, the German
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