Moorhouse, Roger 1968-

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Moorhouse, Roger 1968-

PERSONAL: Born October 14, 1968, in Stockport, Cheshire, England; married; children: two. Education: University of London, M.A., 1994; postgraduate research at the Heinrich Heine Universtät, Düsseldorf, Germany and University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

ADDRESSES: Home—Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire LU7 9EY, England; fax: +44(0)1296 660988. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Historian, writer, editor, and translator. Senior researcher and editorial assistant to Professor Norman Davies, 1995—.

WRITINGS

(With Norman Davies) Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City, Jonathan Cape (London, England), 2002.

Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including BBC History magazine.

SIDELIGHTS: Roger Moorhouse is an historian and author who wrote his first book, Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City, with Norman Davies. In their book, the authors tell the story of Wroclaw, a city in modern-day Poland, close to the borders with the Czech Republic and Germany. The city has had many names over its long existence, most notably the German name Breslau, which it carried until the end of World War Two. It has also undergone numerous changes in government and national and ethnic influence over the years. Moorhouse and Davies explore such issues as national identity and examine the city’s many instances of social turmoil. “Davies and Moor-house set out to present the history of the city, a microcosm of Central Europe, as evenhandedly as possible, freeing it from the straitjackets of German and Polish nationalisms, and giving due weight to its Jewish and Czech components,” wrote Richard Butter-wick in the English Historical Review. Butterwick added that “Microcosm must be acclaimed as exemplary.” Writing in the Spectator, Antony Beevor noted the book’s “scholarship and objectivity,” adding that it “also makes a fascinating story.”

As the author of Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death, Moorhouse presents case studies of eight attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The author examines the people and reasons behind the attempts and also explores how each of the failures, along with the other many failed attempts to assassinate the dictator, helped to lead Hitler and his coterie to the belief that they were unstoppable. “Moorhouse’s documentation and analysis of this comprehensive history will keep readers interested to the end,” wrote George Cohen in Booklist.A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: “Accessible prose, suspenseful narration and ample historical context make this a page-turner.”