Artists in Exile - by Joseph Horowitz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Decades of war and revolution in Europe forced an "intellectual migration" during the last century, relocating thousands of artists and thinkers to the United States. For many of Europe's premier performing artists, America proved to be a destination both strange and opportune.

Featuring the stories of George Balanchine, Kurt Weill, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and many others, Artists in Exile explores the impact that these famous newcomers had on American culture, and that America had on them.

Review Quotes

"Heroically researched . . . chock-full of fascinating vignettes, stunning quotations, and shrewd insights on the fly." -- New York Times

A masterful study of how the Russian Revolution, the rise of European fascism and the second world war all transformed the American performing arts -- The Economist

A persuasive examination of the most compelling of twentieth century cultural phenomena, how refugees from all across Europe, running the gamut from George Balanchine to Billy Wilder, revolutionized American artistic life. Erudite, incisive, inconoclastic, as readable as it is comprehensive, this is just the kind of treatment the participants themselves would have relished. -- Kenneth Turan, film critic, Los Angeles Times

"A rich assembly, an unmasked ball teeming with famous names. . . . Horowitz can make judgements boldly, out of deep knowledge. . . . The way Horowtiz raves learnedly...should send any reader diving into Amazon." -- Times Literary Supplement (London)