The Nine Lives of Arnold

Book excerpt: Who would want to read: The Nine Lives of Arnold? Serious people who have wondered how it was possible for an intelligent and cultured people like the Germans to vote for a maniac like Hitler, history buffs and students who are interested in an entertaining and often humorous report on the time between the two World Wars, World War II and its aftermath. Born in 1917, Arnold von der Porten is raised in a family whose religion was democracy, he describes how the ominous threat of Nazism was fed by the fear of a Communist Revolution and by the foreign politics of the victorious Allies of the first World War. As he left home, Arnold, a boy of 15, brought up in the genteel German middle class, was suddenly tossed into extreme poverty in the British Crown Colony of Jamaica. He describes all aspects of Jamaican life before World War II as he works himself up and eventually starts his own neon shop. This narration and Arnold's 26 drawings are sure to be of great interest to people of all backgrounds and nationalities who wish to understand the time between the two World Wars with the rise of Hitler. Certainly it will be of great interest to British and Jamaican people as well as others who ever lived in, or read about a colony. War comes. He interned with Nazis, Fascists, and Jews alike. Life in a British internment camp. Released, he describes his experience in the Kingston business world. Arnold becomes prominent. He marries Amy Barry of a prominent family. Arnold illuminates a lot of historical events causing Hitler's rise, leading to World War II, the changing fortunes of that War, the Cold War. He was there when the British Empire was breaking up. The independence movement became hostile to foreigners. Amy and Arnold decided to migrate to America in 1953.