Timothy W. Ryback

Who is Timothy W. Ryback?

Timothy W. Ryback is the Deputy-Secretary General of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, and co-founder of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. He was previously Director and Vice President of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a lecturer in the Concentration of History and Literature at Harvard University.

Ryback has written on European history, politics and culture for numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The New York Times. He is also author of The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, published by Pantheon in 2000, a New York Times notable book for 2000. He also wrote Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2008. The book has appeared in more than two dozen editions around the world, and has been both praised for the insights it yields into Hitler's life and personality and criticized for some imprecisions and its lack of comprehensiveness. Ian Kershaw has praised the book for being “elegantly written, meticulously researched, fascinating”.

Ryback is also author of Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, published by Oxford University Press in 1989.