In The New York Times Book Review, Adam Hochschild reviews Ian Buruma’s “Year Zero: A History of 1945.” Mr. Hochschild writes:
Ian Buruma’s lively new history, “Year Zero,” is about the various ways in which the aftermath of the Good War turned out badly for many people, and splendidly for some who didn’t deserve it. It is enriched by his knowledge of six languages, a sense of personal connection to the era (his Dutch father was a forced laborer in Berlin) and his understanding of this period from a book he wrote two decades ago that is still worth reading, “The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan.” His survey rambles over a wide expanse of ground, from sexual behavior (imagine millions of Allied occupation troops in a Germany where women outnumbered men by eight to five), to British and American soldiers unintentionally killing thousands of liberated concentration camp inmates by feeding them more than their shriveled intestinal tracts could handle, to the Allies’ blindness to how much of their cornucopia of food and supplies found its way into the hands of Italian, French and Japanese gangsters, restoring some of their prewar power.
On this week’s podcast, Mr. Buruma discusses “Year Zero”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Diane Ravitch talks about “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools”; Gary J. Bass on “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.