408 pages
21 photographs
Bruce F. Pauley draws on his family and personal history to tell a story that examines the lives of Volga Germans during the eighteenth century, the pioneering experiences of his family in late nineteenth-century Nebraska, and the dramatic transformations that influenced the history profession during the second half of the twentieth century. An award-winning historian of anti-Semitism, Nazism, and totalitarianism Pauley helped shape historical interpretation from the 1970s to the ’90s both in the United States and Central Europe.
Pioneering History on Two Continents provides an intimate look at the shifting approaches to the historian’s craft during a volatile period of world history, with an emphasis on twentieth-century Central European political, social, and diplomatic developments. It also examines the greater sweep of history through the author’s firsthand experiences as well as those of his ancestors who participated in these global currents through their migration from Germany to the steppes of Russia to the Great Plains of the United States.
“Bruce F. Pauley skillfully intertwines his family’s experience of immigrating from Europe to the American Midwest with his own research on fascism and communism. The result is a captivating and truly transatlantic history of modern times.”—Gerald Steinacher, Rosenberg Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and author of Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice
“Bruce F. Pauley writes with an accomplished historian’s eye for context and intergenerational change and has skillfully interwoven different narratives in his autobiography. This is great reading for people interested in immigrant heritage, coming of age in the Midwest in the 1950s, the transformative power of international education, Austria, or history as a profession.”—Lonnie R. Johnson, executive director of the Austrian-American Fulbright Commission in Vienna
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Pauley Family Lineage
1. Pioneers on the Russian Frontier
2. A New Life on the Great Plains
3. Education, Travel, and the Great Depression
4. War, Peace, and Prosperity
5. The Audacity of Youth
6. From Grinnell to Vienna and Back
7. The Ordeal of Graduate School
8. Romance and Marriage
9. Seven Months of Bliss
10. Three Jobs in Three Years
11. Publishing and Perishing
12. From the Frying Pan into the Fire
13. Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis
14. Assessing Anti-Semitism
15. Hot on the Trail of the Cold War
16. Phasing Out
17. Reflections
Notes
Bibliography
Index
