"I am not a hero, I am a composer": Hanns Eisler in Hollywood

The book comes across as out of step with the discipline of American Studies, which has done much to under- stand the economics and cultural politics that set into motion attacks such as that against Eisler, and English-language scholarship on music and displacement. Among this re- cent scholarship, Weber's book stands out precisely because the author stops short of the cosmopolitan reading that, in other cases, relieves Eisler of his status as a per- manent outsider to the Austro-German canon, instead positioning him within in- ternational communities of Jewish intellec- tuals, modernist pedagogues, anti-fascist artists, and more.