French Author on Tour: Johann Chapoutot

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Johann Chapoutot teaches Contemporary History at the Sorbonne, Paris. He is the author of The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi (Belknap Press, 2018) and Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical Past (University of California Press, 2016). His Free to Obey will be published by Europa Books in April of 2023 in a translation by Steven Randall.

ABOUT FREE TO OBEY

(Europa Books, Tr. Steven Rendall)

What if the rules of modern capitalism were written during the Third Reich?

Reinhard Höhn (1904-2000) was a commander of the SS, one of Nazi Germany’s most brilliant legal minds, and an archetype of the fervid technocrats and intellectuals that built the Third Reich. Following Germany’s defeat, after a few years in hiding, he emerged in the early 1950s as the founder and director of a renowned management school in Lower Saxony.

Höhn’s story wouldn’t be very different from that of many other prominent Nazis if not for the fact that a vast number of Germany’s postwar business leaders—more than 600,000 executives—were educated at his management school.

In this fascinating book, Johann Chapoutot, one of France’s most brilliant historians, traces the profound links between Nazism and the principles of modern corporate management, our definitions of success, and a concept of personal freedom that masks rigid hierarchical structures of power and control.

REVIEWS

“One of the most gifted European historians of his generation.”—Timothy Snyder, New York Times best-selling author of On Tyranny

TO BOOK AN EVENT WITH THE AUTHOR

Tour location and date: East Coast, End of January beginning of February 2023

Note that we have limited funding available for our tours. Please let us know if you would be able to arrange for domestic travel to/from the event. If you would like to invite this author to speak at your university or bookstore, please review our guidelines and fill out the application form.

For more information, please email Anne-Sophie Hermil

PROGRAM

April 17 – 21 – EAST COAST

April 17: Albertine Books

April 19: Columbia University

(Additional dates TBA)