Prague Winter

The title Prague Winter conjures up enchanting images--a beautiful city that I've always wanted to visit combined with the most sensual season. Add a most admirable, distinguished former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as its author, who is also a graduate of my alma mater, and I'm engulfed by a book yearning that must be satisfied immediately.

But wait! Not so fast that I want to read this memoir on a Nook or a Kindle. There are photographs, after all. There's the need to browse the book and randomly leaf through the pages, pausing to read a passage here and there, a desire to dive deep into the experience.

And, according to reviewers, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 is a book to be savored. (Review from the Los Angeles Times).

I'm not sure when Albright revealed the following mystery about her past, but I remember puzzling over it when she made it public. I believed her story, but I found it hard to understand that for so many decades she didn't know. And how did her parents manage to keep hidden their ancestries, their personal histories, their identities? But, in central Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s, when it really mattered what you were...Albright's parents decided not to reveal, not ever, that they (and she) were Jewish.

This era in history never ceases to fascinate me. I wish I had a few more links, but I must publish. Dinner awaits.