Tom Reiss

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Tom Reiss (2011)

Tom Reiss (born May 5, 1964 in New York City ) is an American author, historian and journalist who became internationally known through several of his books.

Major works

Tom Reiss became internationally known through the following writings:

  • Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi (1996; together with Ingo Hasselbach ) - Three years earlier, the former neo-Nazi Ingo Hasselbach had published The Reckoning: A Neo-Nazi Rises from his report on the right-wing scene and his exit from it. A few years later, Hasselbach and Reiss worked out the basis for the English version. At that time, Hasselbach hid outside Germany in order to avoid possible acts of revenge from his former environment.
  • The Orientalist: In the footsteps of Essad Bey (published in German in 2008) - A biography about the eventful life of Lev Nussimbaum (1905–1942), who spent his childhood in the then rich and multicultural Baku , had to flee from the Russian Revolution and later lived in the turbulent Berlin of the Weimar Republic and published there under several names, thereby developing into a recognized expert on the Orient, then had to hide his Jewish origins from the National Socialists , and finally died in Italy.
    Reiss' biography became an international bestseller and appeared in more than 18 languages. She was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Literature Prize in 2006.
  • The Black General: The Life of the True Count of Monte Christo (published in German in 2013) - the biography of General Thomas Alexandre Dumas , father of Alexandre Dumas the elder and grandfather of Alexandre Dumas the younger . Thomas Alexandre Dumas came from the French colony of Saint-Domingue , now Haiti . He was the child of a French aristocrat and a slave of African descent; he spent his youth in Paris des Ancien Régime , and then made a career in the military during the revolutionary period and the beginning of the Napoleonic era. Numerous episodes of his life served his son, the writer Alexandre Dumas , as inspiration and were processed by him in his novels The Count of Monte Christo and The Three Musketeers .
    For this work Reiss u. a. Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in the Biography or Autobiography category, and it has appeared on numerous "best of" lists.

resume

Tom Reiss was born in New York City on May 5, 1964 . His family is of Jewish faith; while his maternal grandparents were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp , his mother survived because she was hidden in France as a child.
Reiss spent his early childhood in Manhattan and then in San Antonio and Dallas , Texas, where his father worked as a neurosurgeon in the Air Force. Then his family moved to Massachusetts and from there to New England . He attended the prestigious Hotchkiss Private School and Harvard College , where he worked as a journalist and editor for campus magazines. He graduated in 1987. Reiss worked numerous part-time jobs, which also gave him valuable experience.

In 1989 Tom Reiss traveled to Germany to research his family's history. He was fascinated by the so-called " Wende " and the events of that time, especially in East Germany. One of the reasons Reiss dealt with neo-Nazism and interviewed young neo-Nazis in order to better understand why they adhered to an ideology that had caused the death of many members of his family decades ago.

Bibliography (selection)

  • The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo , London 2012. German edition: The Black General: The life of the true Count of Monte Christo , Munich 2013, ISBN 3-423-28017-4 .
  • The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life , New York 2005. German edition: The Orientalist: In the footsteps of Essad Bey , Hamburg 2008, ISBN 3-940-73105-6 .
  • together with Ingo Hasselbach: Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi , London 1996.

Reiss has also worked as a journalist for The New Yorker , Wall Street Journal and the New York Times .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The previous German work was written by Ingo Hasselbach and Winfried Bonengel : The accounting: A neo-Nazi gets out , Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-351-02413-4 .
  2. ↑ The work attributions that Reiss makes were sometimes controversial. See z. B. in The Guardian: "The Vanishing Fascination of Truly Anonymous Authors"
  3. ↑ http://www.librarything.com/bookaward/Samuel+Johnson+Prize+for+Non-fiction+shortlist
  4. ↑ For example in Time Magazine , or as Book of the Week for the BBC .
personal data
SURNAME Rip, Tom
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 5th May 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City