Traveling Between the Lines

From May to September 1938, one year before the start of World War II, John and Margaret Randolph traveled from the U.S. to Europe. At ages 34 and 27, they were on an adventure, traveling by train, renting bicycles, and sleeping in youth hostels--a typical tour in an atypical time, in a continent on the brink of war. They traveled to Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, England, and Wales before fi nding passage home on a freighter. John F. Randolph, a mathematician who had been at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, kept a daily journal of the trip. After his death, his daughter came across the journal. Knowing what took place in Germany in 1938 and what would follow throughout Europe, she began to fill in the spaces her father left blank. This book became a journey for her too. "John and Margaret Randolph's trip to Europe in 1938 seemed remote from all the political conclusions that might have been expected, and it was just before the Munich Pact, but his writing is an eloquent statement of how little ordinary Americans knew or thought about what was going on in the world at large. John was a mathematician and a noted textbook writer." -Sanford L. Segal, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, University of Rochester, and author of Mathematicians under the Nazis (Princeton University Press, 2003) "It really is a vanished world McBride's parents were traveling through--at once so compellingly filled with menace and innocence. Germany especially was filled with what we now know as burgeoning evil, normal and banal-all of it underscored by McBride's scrupulous annotation. Her father, as the narrator, sees it all and takes it in but nevertheless focuses his steady attention to the calmer and countable parts of life. What an orderly man and what an orderly mind!" - Elizabeth Stone, Professor of English and Communication & Media Studies, Fordham University "I found the book so engaging that I couldn't put it down.... Aside from the major historical events going on all around the American couple... my interest was also piqued by what was going on personally for them. In the attempt to discover the bigger picture, McBride did such a fine job probing for answers to difficult questions." - Elizabeth Wilen-Berg, psychologist and Holocaust educator/writer Rebecca McBride is a freelance writer and editor. She has a B.A. in English from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She gained a love of travel from her parents, who took her and her brother on trips to Europe, the Middle East, the U.S., and Canada. She lives with her husband in Old Chatham, New York. www.rebeccamcbride.net