THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Shirer, William L ___ 1904-1993 ___
American ___ writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
William Shirer was born in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa. His father, a lawyer, died when he was still a child, and
- so the story goes - he had to deliver newspapers and sell eggs to help
the family make ends meet. He graduated with an arts degree, joined the
army briefly, and also worked on a local newspaper. When only 21, Shirer
went to Europe and, settling in Paris, found work on the local copy desk
for the Chicago Tribune, before flowering into a fully fledged foreign correspondent.
Among his assignments were the Amsterdam Olympics, a meeting with Gandhi
in India, and Nadir Khan's crowning in Afghanistan. In 1931, he married
a Viennese photographer, Theresa Stiberitz. The following year, he lost
one eye in a skiing accident. Thereafter, he left his job and, with his
wife, lived in Spain in the house of the guitarist Andrés Segovia
for a while. In 1934, the couple moved to Berlin (one of his first assignments
was to cover the annual Nazi party rally), where Shirer worked for Universal
News Service until 1937. After moving around several times, he went back
to Berlin and stayed until 1940 when he returned to the US. Thereafter,
he undertook a long lecture tour, served as a technical advisor for a Hollywood
film, and edited his journal for publication as 'Berlin Diary', which became
a bestseller. After the war, Shirer returned to Germany for a while to cover
the Nuernberg Trials. He contributed regularly to a number of magazines,
and, in 1947, published his sequel 'End of a Berlin Diary'. His experiences
in Europe, and his interest in the war, led him to become an expert in Nazi
history, about which he wrote extensively. In 1960, he won the (US) National
Book Award for 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1934-1945 ___ domestic travel historyeye
Germany Nazism
WEB TEXT LINKS
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Berlin Diary
End of a Berlin Diary
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |