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Title details for The One Man by Andrew Gross - Available

The One Man

The Riveting and Intense Bestselling WWII Thriller

by Andrew Gross
Edoardo Ballerini
Audiobook
3 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
3 of 3 copies available

"Actor Ballerini turns the scene into a fascinating radio drama...These conversational moments, delicately crafted by Gross and splendidly performed by Ballerini, have a profound effect on the novel's equally well-enacted, action-filled, breathless escape sequence." — Publishers Weekly
1944. Physics professor Alfred Mendel and his family were trying to flee Paris when they were caught and forced onto a train, along with thousands of other Jewish families. At the other end of the long, torturous train ride, Alfred is separated from his family and sent to the men's camp, where all of his belongings are tossed on a roaring fire. His books, his papers, his life's work. The Nazis have no idea what they have just destroyed. And without that physical record, Alfred is one of only two people in the world with his particular knowledge. Knowledge that could start a war, or end it.
Nathan Blum works behind a desk at an intelligence office in Washington, DC, but he longs to contribute to the war effort in a more meaningful way, and he has a particular skill set the U.S. suddenly needs. Nathan is fluent in German and Polish, and he proved his scrappiness at a young age when he escaped from the Krakow ghetto. Now, the government wants him to take on the most dangerous assignment of his life: Nathan must sneak into Auschwitz, on a mission to find and escape with one man.
This historical thriller from New York Times bestseller Andrew Gross is a deeply affecting, unputdownable series of twists and turns through a landscape at times horrifyingly familiar but still completely compelling.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 23, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781427279873
      • File size: 368271 KB
      • Duration: 12:47:13

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 30, 2016
      Bestseller Gross (Everything to Lose) revisits the horrors of Auschwitz in this harrowing, thematically rich thriller, which marks a significant departure from his previous contemporary suspense novels. In the spring of 1944, both the Germans and the Allies are pressing toward the transmutation of uranium into atomic weaponry that could win WWII. Gross postulates that the U.S. Manhattan Project, headed by Robert Oppenheimer and joined by renowned refugee physicists like Denmark’s Niels Bohr, lacked one vital component—but the Nazis have incarcerated the world expert in that area, Dr. Alfred Mendl, in Auschwitz. William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the OSS, backs a near-suicidal plan to send a desk-bound Jewish intelligence officer, Nathan Blum, who escaped from Nazi-overrun Poland, into Auschwitz to rescue Mendl. Alternating between scenes of American hope-against-hope optimism and Nazi brutality, Blum’s deadly odyssey into and out of this 20th-century hell drives toward a compelling celebration of the human will to survive, remember, and overcome. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 31, 2016
      Early on in Gross’s riveting WWII thriller, Nathan Blum attends a meeting with OSS spymaster William “Wild Bill” Donovan and his aide, Peter Strauss, in Washington, D.C. Donovan and Strauss hope to convince Blum to undertake a suicide mission: to break into Auschwitz as an inmate, locate Dr. Alfred Mendl, an imprisoned scientist crucial to a project that could win the war, and break him out. Actor Ballerini turns the scene into a fascinating radio drama, with the gruff but charismatic Donovan greeting the bewildered, shy Yiddish-accented Blum with avuncular friendship. Ballerini finds voices for an assortment of Nazis at Auschwitz, displaying varying degrees of snarling sadism. His Mendl is mildly doddering but proud. The physicist’s protégé, Leo, a brilliant chess master gifted with total recall, has several scenes sharing a chess board and a sweetly innocent flirtation with the sympathetic beautiful blonde wife of the sociopathic commandant. These conversational moments, delicately crafted by Gross and splendidly performed by Ballerini, have a profound effect on the novel’s equally well-enacted, action-filled, breathless escape sequence. A Minotaur hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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