New Books In Biography

Hitler and My Mother-in-Law (OR Books, 2025) is a riveting memoir that explores the intersection of truth—both familial and political—through the colorful and complex life of the author's mother-in-law. In a time like our own of intense propaganda and manipulation, the only WWII female correspondent who covered both theaters of war, Pat Hartwell identified Hitler from a pile of ashes for the US military, and the troops awarded her with a million-dollar painting from Hitler's study. Really? She was the only woman in the CBS news room, assistant to the head of the Office of War Information, VP of one of the largest public relations companies in the world, third in command of UNICEF where she convinced Matisse to provide artwork for free, editor of her own Arizona newspaper where she hustled naïve art on the side, and eventually head of the Hawai’ian arts council, a state of extremely complex political and social stakeholders, where she left a legacy of preventing art fraud. Her story is a fascinating journey