Ron Rosenbaum
Encyclopedia
Life and career
Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New YorkBay Shore, New York
Bay Shore is a hamlet and a census-designated place located in the Town of Islip, Suffolk County, New York, USA. It is situated on the south shore of Long Island, adjoining the Great South Bay. Bay Shore celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2008. The population of the CDP was 23,852 at the time of...
. He graduated from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1968 and won a Carnegie Fellowship to attend Yale's graduate program in English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, though he dropped out after taking one course. He wrote for The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
for several years, leaving in 1975 after which he wrote for Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Harper's, High Times, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, New York Times Magazine and Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
.
Rosenbaum spent more than ten years doing research on Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
including travels to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and Jerusalem, interviewing leading historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
s, philosophers, biographers, theologians and psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
s. Some of those interviewed by Rosenbaum included Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author and former Associate Professor of Political Science and Social Studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controversial books about the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners and...
, David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
, Rudolph Binion, Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Alan Bullock
Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
, Christopher Browning
Christopher Browning
Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian of the Holocaust.-Education:Browning received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1968 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974 to 1999, eventually becoming...
, George Steiner
George Steiner
Francis George Steiner, FBA , is an influential European-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust...
, and Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:...
. The result was his 1998 book, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil is a 1998 book by journalist Ron Rosenbaum which tells of Rosenbaum's struggles with the "exceptionalist" character of Adolf Hitler's personality and impact on the world or, worse from his point of view, his struggle with the possibility...
(Harper Collins. ISBN 0-679-43151-9).
In Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum also recounted in detail the previously little-reported story of the efforts of anti-Hitler journalists at the Munich Post
Munich Post
The Münchener Post was a newspaper published in Munich, Germany notable for its decade-long campaign against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party before their accession to power...
who from 1920 to 1933, published repeated exposés on the criminal activities of the National Socialist German Workers Party
National Socialist German Workers Party
The National Socialist German Workers' Party , commonly known in English as the Nazi Party, was a political party in Germany between 1920 and 1945. Its predecessor, the German Workers' Party , existed from 1919 to 1920...
(i.e. the Nazis). Matthew Ricketson, coordinator of the Journalism program at RMIT
RMIT University
RMIT University is an Australian public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. It has two branches, referred to as RMIT University in Australia and RMIT International University in Vietnam....
University's School of Applied Communication in Melbourne, Australia, called this book "a brilliant piece of research".
In 1987 he began writing a weekly column for the New York Observer
New York Observer
The New York Observer is a weekly newspaper first published in New York City on September 22, 1987, by Arthur L. Carter, a very successful former investment banker with publishing interests. The Observer focuses on the city's culture, real estate, the media, politics and the entertainment and...
called "The Edgy Enthusiast". He currently writes a column for Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
called The Spectator.
His most recent book is The Shakespeare Wars, which discussed recent controversies among literary historians, actors, and directors over how the works of William Shakespeare should be read, understood, and produced.
An Agnostic Manifesto
On Monday, June 28, 2010 he produced a controversial article in SlateSlate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
called An Agnostic Manifesto. The article promoted a New Agnosticism to counter the rise in popularity of the New Atheism
New Atheism
New Atheism is the name given to a movement among some early-21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises." New atheists argue that recent...
.
Cultural influence
In 1971, Rosenbaum wrote an article for EsquireEsquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box
Blue box
An early phreaking tool, the blue box is an electronic device that simulates a telephone operator's dialing console. It functioned by replicating the tones used to switch long-distance calls and using them to route the user's own call, bypassing the normal switching mechanism...
" (later reprinted in The Secret Parts of Fortune), which inspired Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
icon Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
to explore computers. The article received new attention in the wake of Jobs' passing.
Books
- How the End Begins: The Road To a Nuclear World War III (2011)ISBN 0857202766
- The Shakespeare WarsThe Shakespeare WarsThe Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascos, Palace Coups is a 2006 book by Ron Rosenbaum, a one-time graduate student in the English department at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut....
(2006)ISBN 0812978366 - Editor of: Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism (2004)ISBN 0812972031
- The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms (2000)
- Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His EvilExplaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His EvilExplaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil is a 1998 book by journalist Ron Rosenbaum which tells of Rosenbaum's struggles with the "exceptionalist" character of Adolf Hitler's personality and impact on the world or, worse from his point of view, his struggle with the possibility...
(1998) ISBN 0670821586 - Travels with Doctor Death (1991)
- Manhattan Passions: True Tales of Power, Wealth, and Excess (1988)
- Rebirth of the salesman: tales of the song & dance 70s (1979)
- Murder at Elaine'sElaine'sElaine's was an Upper East Side bar and restaurant, located near the corner of 2nd Avenue and East 88th Street in Manhattan which shut its doors for the last time on May 26th, 2011.-History:...
: A novel (1978)
External links
- Complete Slate Spectator archive
- New York Observer
- To aid researchers, author Ron Rosenbaum has allowed the scanning of Explaining Hitler at Amazon.com
- Reviews of The Hitler Of History by John Lukacs & Explaining Hitler: The Search For The Origins Of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum
- Excerpt: The Shakespeare Wars on CBC Words at Large
- Audio interview with Rosenbaum on How the End Begins
- Phillip Nobile and Ron Rosenbaum, "The Curious Aftermath of JFK's Best and Brightest Affair," New Times, July 7, 1976, pp. 22–33.