This Great Escape by Andrew Steinmetz Ultimissimo Modello

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION “What the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!” –L.B. Mayer, on the 1963 film He had fifty-seven seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escape (by John Sturges, starring Steve McQueen); the actor, though uncredited, is Michael Paryla. He was part Jewish. Shortly after filming he died. In This Great Escape, Andrew Steinmetz tenderly reconstructs the life of a man seen by millions yet recognized by no one, whose history–from childhood flight from Nazism to suspicious death twenty years later–intersects bitterly, ironically, and often movingly with the plot of Sturges’s great war film. Splicing together documentary materials with correspondence, diary entries, and Steinmetz’s own travel journal, This Great Escape does more than reconstruct the making of a cinema classic: it is a poignant and moving testament to the complexity of human experience, a portrait of a family for whom acting was a matter of survival, and proof that our most anonymous, uncredited, and undocumented moments can brush against the zeitgeist of world history.
Co-op available Galleys available (BEA, ALA, MLA) National radio campaign (targeting NPR [incl. This American Life, As It Happens] as well as Jewish radio) National print campaign targeting Harper’s, The Nation, Ed Champion, Bookslut, the LA Review of Books, Bookforum, The New Inquiry, The New Republic, The NYRB, Rumpus, Brooklyn Rail, The Millions, Tablet, Foreword,The Jewish Book Council, and more Print campaign will also target film bloggers/reviewers, suggesting book reviews in conjunction with 50th anniversary retrospectives on the film Cover design and promotional materials to complement The Great Escape posters Online/social media campaign including promotion through author website & guest blogs (National Post, Largehearted Boy) Goodreads giveaways Considering submission to B&N Discover Program Considering B&T Arc Program
Book Information
ISBN 9781927428337
Author Andrew Steinmetz
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Biblioasis
Publisher Biblioasis
Weight(grams) 311g