Books

A Windfall of Musicians

REVIEWED BY CHARLES LONBERGER

Though admirable in its intent, Dorothy Lamb Crawford’s A Windfall of Musicians has as its subject artists who fled Nazi Germany and landed largely in Los Angeles. Her topic is so broad in scope that it can only be dealt with superficially. After a prologue that is admirable in its clarity, she becomes bogged down in an episodic quagmire, which is only occasionally enlivened by personalities like Lotte Lehmann who turns out to be far less anti-fascist than she at first seemed.

Crawford’s perspective conspicuously overlooks the Bolshevism of many of her subjects. This willful exclusion betrays a left-wing bias, which distorts the facts and greatly minimizes the veracity of this book. The reader is left with a publication that, while superficially well researched, turns a deliberate blind eye to the reality it addresses, thus converting the reading experience into a form of fraud.

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