Book description
Author Kati Marton follows these nine over the decades as they flee fascism and anti-Semitism, seek sanctuary in England and America, and set out to make their mark. The scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner enlist Albert Einstein to get Franklin Roosevelt to initiate the development of the…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Great Escape as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I knew the names of the nine already: the scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Eugene Wigner; the photographers Robert Capa and André Kertesz; the film-makers Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) and Alexander Korda (The third man); the writer Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon).
I did not know that they were all Hungarians who fled to Britain and America because they were all Jews (albeit lapsed).
Isolated by both language and ethnicity, they learned early that their choice was “innovate or die” – and their innovations would shape the world in which we…
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