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

W. Michael Blumenthal was the United States Secretary of the Treasury in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1979. Born in Germany in 1926, he moved to the United States in 1947 and was educated at Berkeley and Princeton. He served as an Ambassador and Deputy Special Representative for trade negotiations under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Bendix and Burroughs (later Unisys) Corporations. He is currently the director of the Jewish Museum of Berlin, and is the author of The Invisible Wall: Germans and Jews. He splits his time between Princeton, New York, and Berlin.

"[A] perceptive man who would watch and report the changes of the 20th century...Blumenthal’s astute understanding of history allows him to ably demonstrate the significance of good leadership." —Kirkus Reviews

"An astounding life, splendidly recorded: A Jewish boy in Nazi Germany; a last minute escapee to Shanghai, a city of harrowing horror; in 1947 an immigrant to the US; thirteen years later a senior post in Kennedy's New Frontier; thereafter alternating between executive positions in American corporate life and government service, including Carter's Secretary of the Treasury. Now the head of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, himself an exemplar of courage and ambition. A felicitous interweaving of autobiography and history, instructive and impressive, also reflections on a world changed by new technology and microchips. Glimpses of great events and leaders from close up; riveting and highly readable, with the pleasing touch of incredulity about his own success." —Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known

"W. Michael Blumenthal is one of the great Americans of the past century: a truly triple-threat leader in government, business, and the intellectual world. He has been near the center of the enormous historical transformations in each of those domains over the past eight decades, and his personal account of them is both deeply insightful and truly inspiring."—C. Fred Bergsten, Founding Director and Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

“Michael Blumenthal’s remarkable life has traced the 20th century’s major upheavals—from a harrowing escape from Nazi Germany, to resettlement in a Shanghai refugee ghetto, to a rise to the top ranks of corporate life and government service in an America redefining its world role.  Now, the former Treasury Secretary has shared his story in a memoir that is both an engrossing personal narrative and a thoughtful reflection on leadership.” —Henry A. Kissinger, author of On China

Praise for The Invisible Wall:

"Blumenthal brings Jewish history in Germany alive by telling about his ancestors' lives." --Library Journal

"An utterly absorbing account of German Jewry from the early 18th century to the Holocaust . . . a crisply written, personal, anecdotally rich history of a glorious and ultimately tragic community." --Kirkus Reviews