Exiled in Paradise

Exiled in Paradise is a brilliant study of gifted men and women who had to remake their lives in a new world. It was just fifty years ago that the United States saw the beginning of an exceptional migration: a flow of scientists, artists, filmmakers, poets, historians, novelists, and philosophers driven into exile by Hitler and destined to change the very tone of American culture.

Some had to wait in painful suspense before getting here; some had to lie; some made it only by sheer luck. Anthony Heilbut's remarkable narrative tells of the mixed welcome that greeted these unwilling guests once they arrived, and of their moral dilemmas in the face of such events as the bombing of Hiroshima and the anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. It traces the curve of the émigrés' romance with America as their initial devotion gave way to criticism and, for many, fear and disillusionment. Their story, as Heilbut points out, continues today—thanks for revelations made by the Freedom of Information Act.

Raning from Hannah Arendt to Lotte Lenya, from Albert Einstein to Hans Hofmann, from Peter F. Drucker to Billy Wilder, this history is recounted in terms of the émigrés' personal stories: woven together, they comprise and unforgettable drama of people who were forced from one home and compelled to look for another.