Judgment In Berlin

"Suspenseful...moving...equal to any fictional thriller." —San Francisco Chronicle In August 1978, the Iron Curtain still hung heavily across Europe. To escape from oppressive East Berlin, an East German couple, Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede and Ingrid Ruske, hijacked a Polish airliner and diverted it to the American sector of West Berlin. Along with the couple, several passengers spontaneously defected to the West, and were welcomed by US officials. But within hours, Communist officials reminded the West of the anti-hijacking agreements in the Warsaw Pact, and thus the fugitives were arrested by the US State Department. Thirty-four years after World War II, the United States built a court in the middle of West Berlin, the former capital of the Third Reich, in the building that once housed the Luftwaffe, to try the hijacking couple. Former NJ district attorney, now a judge, Herbert J. Stern was appointed the "United States Judge for Berlin." What followed was a trial full of maneuvers and strategies that would put Perry Mason to shame, and answered the question: what is allowed to people seeking freedom? Judgment in Berlin, also a major motion picture starring Martin Sheen and Sean Penn, is unsurpassed as a true-life suspense story, with its vivid accounts of daring escapes, close calls, diplomatic intrigue, and dramatic courtroom confrontations. The original edition won the Freedom Foundation Award, and this updated edition includes a new introduction from author and trial judge Herbert J. Stern.

"In 1963, Berlin is dark and dangerous. Len Deighton's skilled, jaded, anonymous hero of The IPCRESS File is now set to arrange the defection-and fake the death-of a leading Soviet scientist. "A ferociously cool fable" (New York Times) and one of the first novels written after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Funeral in Berlin revels in the fraught, chilling atmosphere of a divided city"--

Isaiah Berlin's classic essay on Tolstoy - an exciting new edition with new criticism and a foreword. 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.' This fragment of Archilochus, which gives this book its title, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Tolstoy. There have been various interpretations of Archilochus' fragment; Isaiah Berlin has simply used it, without implying anything about the true meaning of the words, to outline a fundamental distinction that exists in mankind, between those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things (foxes) and those who relate everything to a central all-embracing system (hedgehogs). When applied to Tolstoy, the image illuminates a paradox of his philosophy of history, and shows why he was frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries and critics. Tolstoy was by nature a fox, but he believed in being a hedgehog.

'Judgment in Berlin' is the third book in Noel Hynd's Berlin series.It is 1948. World War Two is over, Hitler is dead. The Nuremberg trials have concluded. The Marshall Plan attempts to rebuild Europe, though Germany remains occupied by American, British, French, and Soviet military forces. William Thomas Cochrane, an American intelligence agent, is in England with his wife, Laura, visiting friends and family. Bill Cochrane has accepted an invitation to be a guest lecturer for one year at the University of Cambridge. But when summer arrives, so does the first major international crisis of the postwar years. Under Joseph Stalin's orders, the Soviet Union employs the Red Army to block the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Berlin Blockade is retaliation for the Western powers' attempt to institute a pro-Western currency, the Deutschmark, throughout Germany, including Berlin, the former capital. The Soviets offer to end the blockade if the Western Allies withdraw the newly introduced currency from West Berlin. The Allies refuse. But there is no mistaking Soviet tenacity. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov proclaims, "What happens to Berlin, happens to Germany. What happens to Germany, happens to Europe.""And what happens to Europe, happens to the world," President Harry Truman angrily retorts in Washington. "If we can't supply Berlin by train or truck or boat, well, then, we'll damned well bring everything in by airplane!" There is no mistaking the irony: the United States may have been on the winning side of World War Two, but the postwar years quickly have turned old alliances upside down. Americans now defend the enemy capital they bombed just a few years earlier. Truman's words are barely dry in the ink of world newspapers when American and British military aircraft begin a joint operation in support of Berlin, the Berlin Airlift, one of the most iconic "peacetime" operations of the twentieth century. Military aircrews from Canada, New Zealand, France, and South Africa soon join the Americans and the British, flying more than two hundred thousand sorties in the next fifteen months. The airlift will provide West Berliners essentials such as fuel, fresh water, and food. But is it also a potential flashpoint for another world war? As the airlift begins, Bill Cochrane's phone rings in the middle of a balmy, summer night in Cambridge. The lecturing plans and a month of vacationing will have to wait. There are other events surrounding the Blockade and the Airlift that do not make the front pages, and those are the events dealt with in back alleys and dark corridors by men like Bill Cochrane.Cochrane's country is calling him back to active duty for a special assignment in the newly divided Germany, one which will take him behind newly drawn enemy lines and into a perilous netherworld of ruthless black marketeers, petty criminals, prostitutes, ex-Nazis, and Soviet spies.Cochrane has participated in dangerous covert operations in Germany twice in the past, barely escaping with his life both times. But now things are different. Onetime Soviet peers are now suspected enemies and an assortment of ex-Nazis may or may not be his new best friends. Old acquaintances from his previous visits to Germany reemerge, but why? An old gang of adversaries still lurks in the shadows that surround Cochrane's new operation, waiting perhaps for a moment of lethal payback.Espionage fans who read and enjoyed 'Flowers from Berlin' and 'Return to Berlin' will savor the return of Thomas Cochrane. Rich in detail, compelling in its re-creation of history, 'Judgment in Berlin ' is historical World War Two spy fiction at its best. ***"The Berlin Airlift was the first clear Soviet defeat in the Cold War. It's the one thing that the Soviets started and failed to finish." - Diplomatic historian John Gaddis of Yale University.

Isaiah Berlin remains one of the seminal political philosophers of the twentieth century. This book explains his enduring relevance as we face the challenges of the twenty-first.

Since its original publication, Expert Political Judgment by New York Times bestselling author Philip Tetlock has established itself as a contemporary classic in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making. Now with a new preface in which Tetlock discusses the latest research in the field, the book explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.

“Written in a clear and elegant style, The Ghosts of Berlin is . . . a superb guide to this process of urban self-definition, both past and present.” —The Wall Street Journal In the twenty years since its original publication, The Ghosts of Berlin has become a classic, an unparalleled guide to understanding the presence of history in our built environment, especially in a space as historically contested—and emotionally fraught—as Berlin. Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Returning to the city frequently, Ladd continues to survey the urban landscape, traversing its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past. “With erudition, insight, and restraint, Brian Ladd carries off the dangerous task of analyzing architecture and urbanism in Berlin in terms of its horrific political past. He convincingly argues that architecture embodies ideological meaning more powerfully than other artifacts of a society.” —The New York Times Book Review “Ladd examines the conflicts radiating from [Berlin’s] remarkable fusion of architecture, history and national identity.” —History Today “His history of Berlin’s architectural successes and failures reads entertainingly like a detective novel.” —The New Republic “Ladd’s balanced, sensitive chronicle of the Berlin’s traumatized topography brings the past into focus.” —Harvard Design Magazine

After hijacking a Polish airliner in August, 1978, to effect their escape from East Berlin, an East German couple is brought to trial under American auspices in Berlin, and the jury deliberates the issue of what is allowed to people seeking freedom