Ask the Author: Gerald Posner
Answered Questions (6)
Gerald Posner
In 1984, I traveled to Buenos Aires as part of my research for a biography of
Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele. In a great break, I got access to the Federal Police file on Mengele. There, and later in files in Paraguay, I came across information about Nazis who had arrived in South America with the help of some prominent Catholic bishops after the war. I promised to return one day to that story to see what else I might discover. It took twenty years before I found a publisher willing to let me conduct a no-holds barred investigation. And what I discovered is that my initial focus - on the church on possible links to Nazi fugitives - was much too narrow. The story I uncovered centered on money and power. What I thought would concentrate on a decade expanded into a 200-year history.
Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele. In a great break, I got access to the Federal Police file on Mengele. There, and later in files in Paraguay, I came across information about Nazis who had arrived in South America with the help of some prominent Catholic bishops after the war. I promised to return one day to that story to see what else I might discover. It took twenty years before I found a publisher willing to let me conduct a no-holds barred investigation. And what I discovered is that my initial focus - on the church on possible links to Nazi fugitives - was much too narrow. The story I uncovered centered on money and power. What I thought would concentrate on a decade expanded into a 200-year history.
Gerald Posner
I am also an attorney. In the early 1980s, I represented some twins who were Auschwitz survivors and had been experimented on by Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele (the so-called Angel of Death). We were trying to get the German government and/or the Mengele family to pay for the extra medical costs those twins incurred every year as a result of the horrific experiments Mengele had done at Auschwitz. Although the legal effort failed, I turned my several years of research into a biography in 1986, MENGELE: THE COMPLETE STORY. I was hooked from that point on for books and writing....
Gerald Posner
Just finished GOD'S BANKERS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND MONEY AT THE VATICAN. The research for this book began in 2005. I have spent more time uncovering the information and writing the story than on any other book I've done.
Gerald Posner
Have a thick skin for rejections. It is a business built on editors often saying 'no' to a proposed book or article. Once you realize that the rejection often has little to do with the quality of your work, but is driven by economics, space, and what else is on their list, you will not take a 'no' personally. That is the first big step to paying your bills by writing. Persevere.
Gerald Posner
It's like being an eternal student. I get to select a subject on which I'm interested, get the backing of a publisher to go ahead and spend a couple of years living with it, and then get to come back with a finished book. It's like Groundhog Day in completing a doctoral thesis again and again. The subject of the latest book becomes my world.
Gerald Posner
I'm stubborn, so I refuse to accept it. That means when I am on a deadline, I work everyday. If the writing seems to be going nowhere, I'll fall back to research or editing, depending on where I am in the process. But stopping and doing nothing, even for a day or two, breaks the momentum that is so critical to me on a large book.
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