Christo­pher Isherwood’s The Berlin Sto­ries was the inspi­ra­tion for the Broad­way musi­cal Cabaret and the film of the same name. These works depict a piv­otal moment in Euro­pean his­to­ry: the short-lived Weimar Repub­lic, which offered unprece­dent­ed free­doms after the fall of the Kaiser at the end of the First World War. Those free­doms par­tic­u­lar­ly appealed to a group of bril­liant queer men who moved to Berlin because — as Ish­er­wood put it — ​“Berlin meant boys.”

That cir­cle includ­ed Ish­er­wood, the British poets W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, the Amer­i­can author Paul Bowles and the writer Ger­ald Hamil­ton, whom Ish­er­wood fic­tion­al­ized as the unpleas­ant title char­ac­ter in Mr. Nor­ris Changes Trains. There was also one woman, Jean Ross, who was the inspi­ra­tion for Cabaret​’s Sal­ly Bowles — a ​“pas­sion­ate com­mu­nist” who ​“was sup­posed to have slept with 200 men.”

One Jew­ish man also played a major role: Wil­frid Israel. Wil­frid inher­it­ed his family’s depart­ment store in Berlin, Kaufhaus N. Israel, but lost it when Jew­ish busi­ness­es were ​“Aryanized” by the Nazis. He went on to help fund a kib­butz in Pales­tine, near Ben She­men, and assist­ed the Youth Aliya orga­ni­za­tion. He also helped res­cue as many as 50,000 Jews, enabling them to move to Great Britain.

Bri­an Fair­banks, a jour­nal­ist, not only cap­tures the uncer­tain­ties and dan­gers of Berlin dur­ing the rise of the Nazis; he also has a keen eye for the moments that exem­pli­fy that trans­for­ma­tion. One was the vicious attack by Nazi riot­ers on the office of Mag­nus Hirschfeld, the physi­cian who was the first sys­tem­at­ic researcher of sex­u­al­i­ty and the first advo­cate for LGBT rights. Christo­pher Ish­er­wood wit­nessed that event — and three days lat­er, left Berlin with his boyfriend.

Fair­banks also looks beyond Ger­many. Jean Ross, like a num­ber of oth­er cre­ative artists, took up the cause of oppos­ing the right-wing Nation­al­ists in Span­ish Civ­il War. (Ger­ald Hamil­ton sup­port­ed the Nation­al­ist leader, the future dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co.) Ross went on to write for the Com­mu­nist news­pa­per The Dai­ly Work­er.

By 1938 it was no longer safe to stay in Europe. Ish­er­wood and Auden retreat­ed to New York, whose inter­war atmos­phere Fair­banks describes in abun­dant, vivid detail. This book goes well beyond its promise to tell the sto­ries of the peo­ple who inspired Cabaret; it ele­gia­cal­ly fol­lows each of the key per­son­al­i­ties to the very end of their lives. And, as if that weren’t enough, it con­tains some forty-two pages of notes which doc­u­ment the extra­or­di­nary research which under­lies this very impres­sive achievement.