Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE Budapest Boy GEORGE SOROS WAS born in Budapest in 1930, at a time when Europe was slowly falling apart. He grew up in a well-educated Jewish family, the son of Tivadar Soros, a lawyer who believed in Esperanto and liberal ideals. But the world around them wasn’t idealistic. It was on fire. By the time Soros was a teenager, Hungary was already aligned with Nazi Germany. But in 1944 the Germans fully occupied the country and launched one of the fastest, deadliest mass deportations of the entire war. Soros, just fourteen years old, survived by hiding under a false identity. His father had arranged documents, contacts, and safe houses. It worked. The family avoided Auschwitz. Most...