The webmaster and author of this website, Hyde Flippo, was born in Roswell, New Mexico (USA) in 1942. (Note: Those supposed UFOs and aliens did not arrive until five years later in 1947.) He is happy to share his June 22 birthday with the late Austrian-American film director Billy Wilder. After growing up in California and North Carolina, Flippo has lived in Reno, Nevada since 1960. He is now a semi-retired high school teacher (of German, natürlich) and a busy webmaster for several personal sites. Prior to The German Way, his first published book, he had written several published articles on a variety of topics, including early German cinema, the fate of foreign language study in the U.S., and software reviews. He has also had six of his architectural photographs published in a textbook for interior designers. His latest publication is When in Germany, Do As the Germans Do. He also co-authored Deutsche Sagen und Legenden (German Legends) with Herb Kernecker. All three books are available from Amazon.com or your local bookstore. For 10 years (1998-2008) Hyde was the Guide for German Language at About.com, a position he recently gave up in order to devote more time to his writing and websites.

The author is married and has two grown sons whose late mother came from Graz, Austria (yes, Arnold's hometown). He became a grandfather for the first time in 2000. Since his first European journey back in 1967, he has spent much time there, particularly in the German-speaking countries. As a teacher he frequently took groups of students on school exchange trips, in addition to private trips to Europe and Mexico. As a result of his experiences and many in the German-speaking world, Flippo began writing The German Way in the summer of 1992. Actually, the working title was “Germany for Beginners” and he didn’t know the end result would be called The German Way until NTC Publishing (now McGraw-Hill) asked him to write the German part of that series. Since the author had room for only about half of his material and resources in the The German Way and When in Germany, there are still a few more books to come out of his computer. A book version of the German-Hollywood Connection site is also planned.

The author and his wife Cheryl continue to travel in Europe and the German-speaking countries from time to time, visiting friends, doing more book research, taking pictures, and enjoying the culture. In 2007/2008 Hyde lived in Berlin for nine months, learning even more about the German language and culture.

  - Hyde Flippo

CONTACT the author at hflippo2001@yahoo.com
HYDE’S BERLIN BLOG: Tapetenwechsel

Copyright © 2003-2008 Hyde Flippo