First published 2012
Madeleine Albright chronicles her childhood years from 1937 to 1948, when global catastrophe reshaped her world before she turned twelve. She draws on family documents, interviews, and newly discovered records to reconstruct how the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia forced her family into exile. Albright traces their journey from Prague's ancient castle to London's bomb shelters as World War II erupted around them. She examines the destruction of European Jewry, her family's hidden Jewish heritage, and the moral choices her parents faced during the war. The narrative follows ordinary citizens transformed into exiles, resistance fighters, and collaborators as familiar concepts like fear, trust, and the search for identity took on life-or-death meaning. Albright reflects on her Czech homeland's complex history and her own decades-later discovery of her family's true background. She argues that the period's enormous complexity can be understood through universal childhood experiences of adaptation and moral choice. The book spans from Bohemian capitals to prison ghettos to the highest levels of government, showing how millions were torn from normal life and thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
Genres: history, 20th-century, world-war-ii, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, London, Prague
Period: 1937-1948
467 pages · Hardcover · HarperCollins Publishers
Content warnings: war