The advice of a non -alien

Thomas Mann, German Hesse and Tit Liby - about what is happening now

In my far from a short life there was no day without reading. I just do not know how to exist without a book that allows myself to rely on the most difficult days, like those that go a mournful series from February 24. I suspect that I am not the only one, so I’m ready to share the list of what I read. (All of the above is in Russian translation and so far is easily accessible on the network).

The most natural at such a time is to turn to German experience. In search of an answer to the urgent questions of a new life, I first rushed for advice to my favorite antifashist writers and undertook to re-read the letters of Thomas Mann and German Hesse. Both were in a similar situation, when with horror, from the side and directly looked at what was happening in the homeland of their tongue. Well, the result of this historical stage summarizes the extremely relevant study of Karl Yaspers “The issue of guilt. On the political responsibility of Germany. "

In order to prepare for the reality of a reality, which is familiar with the previous life, it is useful to read the book of Robert Darnton “Censors at work” released by the UFO publishing house, especially its last part, which tells about the practice of censorship in the GDR.

Daily battal reports prompted me to read the bestseller of the American journalist-historian Eric Larson “Fear and Nadezhda. How Churchill saved Britain from the disaster. ” It describes in detail about London Blitz, about how the British took out the daily raids of Nazi aviation and how Churchill, who is so often remembered today, managed to rally the country and convince it of victory.

Continuing excursions into history, this time domestic, I read the novel “Conspiracy” of Russian Feihtwanger Mark Aldanov, exciting a fiction report on the murder of Emperor Paul.

As always in such desperate times, antiquity serves me with a refuge from today. This time I undertook to re -read Titus Libya. In his chronicle of early Rome, I have a recipe for state institutions, which for centuries saved the republic from dictatorship and taught it - and heirs - the wisdom of the separation of powers.

In the end, I admit that, stunning from the stream of terrible news and monstrous reports that are conveyed to us free media, I find comfort in old detective series. The best of them is Poirot on Agatha Christie with the incomparable David Sush. The temptation of this lightweight genre is that the mind reigns here. And no matter how cunning and incredible the motives of criminals are, they are, which means that the task has a solution and criminal dislocation can be adjusted when a rational genius of the investigation is taken for business. If in life it was like in a movie, then we would not need it.