In When the World Dies, you track how high hopes at the beginning of the 20th century disappeared with the appearance of world wars, genocide, and the nuclear age. Was there a particular historical event that compelled you to write this book?

The genocide of the Jews in World War II: My father’s Jewish family remained in Europe and was lost in the genocide. On his father’s side, they had already emigrated to the U.S. But on his mother’s side, they remained in Budapest with the exception of an uncle who left for Australia. That uncle, my great uncle, visited us and told of his harrowing escape. My mother was Protestant and of Dutch-German lineage.

Can you share with us a little about the research that went into putting this book together?

My research started about 5 or 6 years ago. I was fascinated by Stefan Zweig, an Austrian writer, forced to leave Salzburg after his home was ransacked and then sold for pennies. He ended in Petropolis, Brazil, where he and his wife were granted asylum. By 1942, distraught, he and his second wife committed suicide. That sent me to both places and prompted me to examine his situation and widen my research to all exiles and survivors. So, I read the secondary and primary sources and went to two archives: the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA, and the National Archives in Suitland, Maryland.

What gives you hope in a period you describe as so dangerous?

My thesis is simple: D.E. Davis has a new book, When the World Dies: Life and Death in an Age of Infamy. He calls the 20th century “infamous” because of its two world wars, totalitarianism, and the “button,” the one used in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer to explode the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, NM. We have arrived in 2026, he insists, like the year 800 CE, when Charlemagne saved civilization from the barbarians. Either a new Charlemagne comes along and saves us from modern barbarians, or civilization goes down.

If readers remember only one message from When the World Dies, what would you want it to be?

Maybe, it is thought, there is a parallel between 1945 and the nuclear bombings of Japan and 2026 with the Iran war: gain a quick victory by astonishing means, nuclear; silence the opposition at home and abroad; and cower potential enemies. After all, senior Iranian officials have suggested its use against Israel. Some even say we are already in World War III. Recently, I gave a slide lecture about my book, everything from Kenneth Clark showing us what civilization looks like to Major T.J. “King” Kong riding the A-bomb to civilization’s destruction in Stanley Kubrick’s film, Dr. Strangelove. As this lecture neared an ending, I played Vera Lynn singing, “We’ll Meet [that bomb] Again Some Sunny Day.” (My book’s cover design is from the International Radiation Symbol’s designer, Cyrill Orly, 1946, University of California, Berkeley, Radiation Laboratory.)

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