From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century

“An engrossing personal narrative and a thoughtful reflection on leadership.” —Henry Kissinger

In a life that has spanned nearly nine decades and has taken him across the world and back, W. Michael Blumenthal has borne witness to the world’s convulsions and transformations during the twentieth century. Born in Germany between the two world wars, Blumenthal narrowly escaped the Nazi horror, when, in 1939, he and his family fled to Shanghai’s chaotic Jewish ghetto, where they spent the entirety of the Second World War. From these fraught and humble beginnings, Blumenthal would emerge as a major leader in American business and politics. In the second half of the century, Blumenthal headed two major American corporations—Bendix and Burroughs (later Unisys); served as a United States trade ambassador in the State Department and the White House, advising John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; and served under Jimmy Carter as the Secretary of the Treasury. After his retirement from business and politics, he began an entirely new chapter in his career, when he conceived and served as the director of Europe’s largest Jewish museum—the Jewish Museum of Berlin—a position he still holds today. An essential autobiography by one of America’s great political figures, From Exile to Washington is an engaging chronicle of the twentieth century’s greatest upheavals, and a tribute to a lifetime of courage, leadership and decisiveness.