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The Ides of August: The Berlin Wall Crisis, 1961

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1978 hardcover with dust cover has stain on the outside pages

534 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

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About the author

Curtis Cate

15 books7 followers
American biographer who chronicled the lives of several well-known European writers, among them Nietzsche, George Sand, and André Malraux. Cate was born in Paris in 1924 to transplanted American parents. He died of melanoma in Paris, France, where he had lived for most of his life, on November 16, 2006.

Curtis Wilson Cate was born in Paris on May 22, 1924, to transplanted American parents. From 1943 to 1946, he served in Europe with the United States Army.

Mr. Cate earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard in 1947. This was followed by a master’s degree in Russian from the École des Langues Orientales in Paris and a master’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford.

In 1954, Mr. Cate joined the staff of The Atlantic Monthly; he was the magazine’s European editor from 1958 to 1966. His writing also appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and elsewhere.

Mr. Cate’s wife, the former Helena Bajanova, died in 2002.

Among Mr. Cate’s other books are “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry” (Putnam, 1970); “George Sand” (Houghton Mifflin, 1975); “The Ides of August: The Berlin Wall Crisis, 1961” (M. Evans, 1978); “The War of the Two Emperors: The Duel Between Napoleon and Alexander” (Random House, 1985); and “André Malraux” (Hutchinson, 1995).

He also wrote “My Road to Opera: The Recollections of Boris Goldovsky” (Houghton Mifflin, 1979), an as-told-to autobiography of the opera impresario.

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Profile Image for Boris Cesnik.
292 reviews3 followers
December 5, 2020
An episode in history of too many humanities recounted in tiny details seemingly without a head or a tail.
An aseptic narrative with bland language that captures disparate moments but denies empathy and historical threads.
A book of scenes and no passages - verses without choruses and refrains
A story full of amazing stories within a flat literal purpose.
Profile Image for Paul Grant.
Author 4 books12 followers
August 6, 2017
Excellent book - full of real life incidents - weaves the political scene at the time of the Berlin Crisis with the effect of those decisions on streets of divided Berlin.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews