The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World
by By Dawidoff, Nicholas
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Historical

The most interesting lives are not always the best-known lives, and this is the account of a truly fascinating person. The stories of Alexander Gerschenkron - his great escapes, his vivid wit, his feuds, his flirtations, and his supremely cultured mind - are the stuff of legend.Born in 1904 into the progressive Odessa intelligentsia, Gerschenkron fled the Russian revolution at sixteen and settled in Vienna, immersing himself in the charged civic and intellectual life of another doomed city. Escaping the Nazis in the late 1930s, he made his way to Massachusetts, evolving from a political exile and social outcast into a man referred to by The New York Times as "Harvard's scholarly model," and by his peers as "The Great Gerschenkron" - the Harvard professor who knew the most.