The Mind in Exile Thomas Mann in Princeton

In September 1938, Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning author ofDeath in VeniceandThe Magic Mountain, fled Nazi Germany for the United States. Heralded as "the greatest living man of letters," Mann settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where, for nearly three years, he was stunningly productive as a novelist, university lecturer, and public intellectual. InThe Mind in Exile, Stanley Corngold portrays in vivid detail this crucial station in Mann's journey from arch-European conservative to liberal conservative to ardent social democrat.
On the knife-edge of an exile that would last fully fourteen years, Mann declared, "Where I am, there is Germany. I carry my German culture in me." At Princeton, Mann nourished an authentic German culture that he furiously observed was "going to the dogs" under Hitler. Here,...