Thomas Mann is one of the most celebrated German writers in history, and he experienced this phenomenal acclaim within his own lifetime. In 1938, the year he left Europe for exile in the United States, Mann was sixty-three years old, with seventeen years of great productivity ahead of him; he could be regarded as having reached the middle of his literary career.

Mann was one of the few German-speaking intellectuals who received a warm welcome in the United States; within a short time he was fully integrated into American society. Even before his exile Mann was well known to Americans as the winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize for literature. His name had again been brought to the American public's attention when he made his second trip to the United States in 1935, during which Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate and President Roosevelt received him in the White House...