Joseph Roth was a master journalist from Vienna who moved to Berlin on 1920 to investigate and report first hand on what he feared was a doomed megapolis. WHAT I SAW: REPORTS FROM BERLIN 1920-1933 is one of the most refreshingly original books to grace our shores in years. Roth was concerned with newspaper writing but he was also a poet of rare distinction and courage. These 'feuilletons' or short essays on observations reveal insights into the Berlin from the fall of the Weimar Republic to the rise of the Nazi reqime. Calling these small essays 'readers for walkers' Roth wanders the streets and mass transportation of Berlin, looking into the backyards of common day people, the Jewish neighborhoods/ghettoes, the photographs in the police files of the unknown dead victims found in the gutters, the high wired clubs of decadent diversions, buildings of history and of future, and all the while he maintains a beautiful descriptive, poetic style while keeping his eyes wide open to the pathetic prophecy of the doom of the great city of Berlin. His words: 'The story of how absolutism and corruption, tyranny and speculation, the knout and shabby real estate dealings, cruelty and greed, the pretense of tough law-abidingness and blathering wheeler-dealer stood shoulder to shoulder, digging foundations and building streets, and of how ignorance, poor taste, disaster, bad intentions and the occassional very happy accident have come together in building the capital of the German Reich...' are balanced on other pages of describing the beauty of the sky above Berlin, the pathos of the lonely and neglected poor people on the trains, and the wonder of the vaguely temporary air that surrounded the bulding of a city after The Great War.

Roth is able to tell us so much history in so brief a space. Here are the beginnings of Isherwood's BERLIN STORIES, the birth of the style of the recent works of WG Sebald's books, and even the writings of Edmund White in THE FLANEUR. Would that our newspapers could find the space AND the talent to place such insightful observations in our poetically vapid journalism of today! This is a rare book of beautiful writing and we are indebted to translator Michael Hofmann not only for his lyrical English style, but also for his own insightful essay about the man who wrote these 'feuilletons'. A sad parting note is that Joseph Roth died in Paris in 1939 from the effects of his alcoholism. Such was the influence of Berlin on many artists of thetime.

It's true, there's poetry on every page. Beautifully rendered portraits of a city and a culture. Roth's poetic imagination and powers of observation are only matched by his compassion. A must read-for anyone interested in the development of the 20th century human in Europe.

Joseph Roth, What I Saw; Reports from Berlin 1920-1933. Translated by Michael Hofmann. I enjoy walking around cities, noticing people, activities, and places, especially the five boroughs of my New York. This new book collects and translates some thirty-four essays Joseph Roth penned for newspaper readers between 1920 and 1933. He was a young outsider from Lemberg (Lviv) and Vienna, but he is obviously a Berliner, a man fascinated by its people and scenes. We tend to know Berlin of this period from history books or "Cabaret." This book engaged me because each essay is a fresh look at an aspect of life in the German capital during this crucial period. For example, as U.S. newspapers now report the ever-growing Wal-Marts, Roth's essay, "The Very Large Department Store," looks at the trend as a poet does, with notice to the way crowds are swept upwards, almost against their will, to further displays. Moreover, the displays are so numerous that the multiplicity of the offerings devalues each item. Note also the essay, "With the Homeless" (1920), for his sensitive description of people. Roth observed well, wrote well. Whoever chose the accompanying photographs, added meaningful and helpful images, on theme, even if sometimes off-date. Dating some photographs was smart.