Pamela D. Toler
I'm an academic renegadeThe first day of my PhD program at University of Chicago, my advisor said, "You know there are no jobs, right?" I knew, but I didn't care. I wanted to write about history for a broader audience than the other five people interested in my dissertation topic. I wanted to write for history buffs and nerdy kids and the general intelligent reader. (That would be you, right?)Officially my degree is in the history of the Indian sub-continent, with strong sub-fields in European imperialism and Islam. I feel strongly that the West in general and Americans in particular need to know more about the history of other parts of the world. That belief is often reflected in the topics I choose to write about, whether I'm working on a small story (feather hats in ancient Peru, anyone?) or a big one (Mankind: the Story of All of Us). These days I write about a wide range of historical topics for history buffs, nerdy kids and--you get the idea. On any given day I could be working on World War I recruiting posters, the mud mosques of West Africa, the first European translation of the Arabian Nights, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, or the history of absinth. At least half the time I'm writing outside of "my field", exploring odd corners of the past with field-tested research skills, a red-hot library card, and a large bump of curiosity. Basically, I'm interested in the times and places where two cultures meet and change each other. Come along for the ride.
The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany
Pamela D. Toler
For fans of unheralded women’s stories, a captivating look at Sigrid Schultz, one of the earliest reporters to warn Americans of the rising threat of the Nazi regime—drawing striking parallels to the rise of fascism today
“No other American correspondent in Berlin knew so much of what was going on behind the scene as did Sigrid Schultz.” — William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Dragon from Chicago tells the gripping tale of American journalist Sigrid Schultz's fights on two to establish herself as a serious foreign correspondent in an era when her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a “freak” and to keep the news flowing out of Nazi Germany despite the regime’s tightening controls on the media.
Schultz was the Chicago Tribune 's Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941, and one of the first reporters—male or female—to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Pamela D. Toler unearths the largely forgotten story of Schultz’s years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through Nazi atrocities and air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front page stories, Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats.
Sharp and enlightening, Schultz’s story provides a vital lesson for how we can reclaim truth in an era marked by the spread of disinformation and claims of “fake news.”
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