A German newspaperwoman recounts her girlhood in a noble family in East Prussia and her escape from the Russians The author grew up on her family's estate in pre-World War II East Prussia, lost to the Soviets in 1945. Hers was a carefree childhood, little hampered by education but nonetheless governed by her mother's strong sense of the obligations of Prussian nobility. At the end of the war Donhoff fled on horseback to West Germany, and in time became editor and then publisher of the leading newspaper Die Zeit . A foreward by George F. Kennan sets in context this rather slight memoir, which captures some of the flavor of a world so devastated by war that little remains to preserve its memory. Recommended for collections in 20th-century European history. - Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.