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chaoticmissadventures 's review for:
Freedom: Memories 1954 – 2021
by Angela Merkel
I am not sure, not being a German, how Merkel is viewed in her home country. But as an American I find her book to be incredibly level headed. She strikes a balance between defending her actions and being humble of what she sees as errors she made. This was refreshing to read after Nancy Pelosi's book last year where she couldn't be forced to ever admit she did anything even remotely incorrect her entire political career.
The book felt a bit unbalanced in the pacing. The first quarter or so about her childhood was engaging and quick paced, then we lag a bit in the middle (one awful chapter where she alphabetically lists all her meetings, yikes, should have been scrapped) after a bit the pace picks back up, as she tries to cover quite a bit. I appreciated how she routinely circled back to growing up in East Germany and how that split country, and repressed social order, shaped how she saw the world - from finances to immigration.
This overall was an affective autobiography. It is over 700 pages in English, and I felt fully engaged throughout. While I don't agree with her on many points of her politics, I thought she did a decent job explaining how she saw things, and why she made the decisions she did, and it sounds like she really has taken other people's opinions on her mistakes into account, and like she is someone who you can have a decent conversation with if you do not agree.
The book felt a bit unbalanced in the pacing. The first quarter or so about her childhood was engaging and quick paced, then we lag a bit in the middle (one awful chapter where she alphabetically lists all her meetings, yikes, should have been scrapped) after a bit the pace picks back up, as she tries to cover quite a bit. I appreciated how she routinely circled back to growing up in East Germany and how that split country, and repressed social order, shaped how she saw the world - from finances to immigration.
This overall was an affective autobiography. It is over 700 pages in English, and I felt fully engaged throughout. While I don't agree with her on many points of her politics, I thought she did a decent job explaining how she saw things, and why she made the decisions she did, and it sounds like she really has taken other people's opinions on her mistakes into account, and like she is someone who you can have a decent conversation with if you do not agree.