Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, REBECCA DONNER’s brilliant book All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days reads like a mystery, a thriller, a biography, and a historical novel all in one. It is the story of Donner’s great-great-aunt, Mildred Harnack, who moved to Berlin as a young Midwestern grad student and became one of the leaders of the largest underground resistance groups to Hitler in the 1930s and 40s. It is both an intimate portrait of a courageous young woman and an absorbing account of how a murderous demagogue masterminded Germany’s progression from democracy to dictatorship. Donner will share Mildred’s story and talk about the dogged scholarly research that helped her piece together her great-great-aunt’s extraordinary life.

Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan