The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story (Thorndike Press Large Print Biography Series) - Hardcover

Ackerman, Diane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1410403491 ISBN 13: 9781410403490

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2008

Synopsis

Documents the true story of Warsaw Zoo keepers and resistance activists Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who in the aftermath of Germany's invasion of Poland saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish citizens by smuggling them into empty cages and their home villa.

About this title

Review:

Amazon Significant Seven, September 2007: On the heels of Alan Weisman's The World Without Us I picked up Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper’s Wife. Both books take you to Poland's forest primeval, the Bialowieza, and paint a richly textured portrait of a natural world that few of us would recognize. The similarities end there, however, as Ackerman explores how that sense of natural order imploded under the Nazi occupation of Poland. Jan and Antonina Zabiniski--keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who sheltered Jews from the Warsaw ghetto--serve as Ackerman's lens to this moment in time, and she weaves their experiences and reflections so seamlessly into the story that it would be easy to read the book as Antonina's own miraculous memoir. Jan and Antonina's passion for life in all its diversity illustrates ever more powerfully just how narrow the Nazi worldview was, and what tragedy it wreaked. The Zookeeper’s Wife is a powerful testament to their courage and--like Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise--brings this period of European history into intimate view. --Anne Bartholomew

About the Author:

Diane Ackerman is the author of many highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including A Natural History of the Senses, a book beloved by millions of readers all over the world, and The Zookeeper's Wife, which received the Orion Book Award. She has taught at Columbia and Cornell and has been published in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Parade, the New Yorker, and National Geographic.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1410403491
• ISBN 13: 9781410403490
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 487