Andrew Nagorski spikes his thriller with truly terrifying notes...Shortly before the dash for freedom, two of Freud’s children, Anna and Martin, were questioned by the Gestapo...They had taken the precaution of asking Schur for a deadly barbiturate to take if torture ensued...Moreover, four of Freud’s elderly sisters stayed in Austria; three perished in Treblinka, while the fourth starved to death...At the end of this otherwise excellent book we are still left pondering how Freud himself, whose work was all about facing up to the unpleasant realities of human life, could carry on believing for so long that he alone could give History the slip...A gripping account of how colleagues and admirers spirited the psychoanalyst from Nazi-controlled Vienna to London..

... excellent.

Saving Freud is not an original book; pretty much everything in it is already well known and documented elsewhere. But the conceit of the book, which is a kind of group biography of the people who helped 'save' Freud from the Nazis, is a strong one.

... absorbing.

Nagorski tells a riveting new story, one that shows just how narrow Freud’s escape from the Nazi genocide was.

Saving Freud tells the story of a group of people—including Freud's daughter Anna and her lover, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (heiress to the Tiffany & Co. fortune); the U.S. ambassador to France, William Bullitt; and Marie Bonaparte, princess of Greece and great-grandniece to Napoleon—who did just that...Motivated by love and towering respect for a man and his work, the unlikely team cooperated seamlessly to achieve the near impossible...It is a tale of good-heartedness, of human devotion and of people who unhesitatingly rushed in to do the right thing...In this way, it feels like a relief to read...Far from being a dry historical account, the book's emphasis on the personal creates a compelling, page-turning narrative that is wholly engrossing and difficult to put down...Nagorski has written a book for our time, reminding us of the potential for good and adherence to higher ideals in moments of global emergency..

... mixes almost minute-by-minute events among this widely divergent group with lengthy, fascinating and at times tender recollections of Freud’s long, colorful life and rich mental conceptions. They are innovative in ways that are still today being recalled and refined as his new science has taken strong hold on how we think about ourselves.

A richly contextual look at Freud's escape to London...Though veteran journalist and author Nagorski delivers a riveting page-turner, German troops don’t enter Austria until Page 230, and Freud leaves on Page 254...Few readers will complain once they realize that the narrative is a fine biography of Freud...The author pays close attention to his subject’s early life and struggles and the development of psychoanalysis, which, focused on childhood sexuality and the unconscious, enraged as many as it fascinated and made Freud an international celebrity by 1900...Nagorski doesn’t ignore Freud’s early followers (Jung, Adler), many of whom who were out of the picture by the 1930s, but he maintains a sharp focus on a small group who remained loyal, again delivering complete, satisfying biographies that don’t emphasize the rescue...Excellent biographies of Freud and some contemporaries..

Journalist Nagorski reveals that Freud, who was 81 years old and struggling with cancer when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, was in deep denial of the danger he faced as a Jew and as the founder of psychoanalysis, which the Nazis deemed 'Jewish pseudoscience'...Though Freud’s relationships with Carl Jung and Albert Einstein are discussed, the focus is on those credited with getting him out of Europe, including Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones; William Bullitt, the U.S. ambassador to France and a patient of Freud’s; and European socialite Marie Bonaparte...Nagorski draws vivid profiles of these and other acquaintances, shares intriguing tidbits about Freud’s eccentricities, and dramatically recounts how Freud, his wife, and his daughter escaped to London...The result is an invigorating look at a lesser-known chapter of Freud’s well-documented life..