NONFICTION - Sept. 1, 1991

AHEAD OF TIMES by Ruth Gruber (Wynwood: $19.95; 310 pp.) Gruber had a rather remarkable early life. The headstrong young woman, fresh out of college with a master’s degree, went to Germany on a year’s fellowship despite her parents’ terrified warnings of what could happen to a Jewish woman in a country where Adolf Hitler was gaining power. She fell in love there with a man who would eventually join the Nazi Party. She became a journalist and returned to Germany; she traveled to Russia, and then, at the ripe old age of 25, returned to the United States as a journalist and author. The book reads rather like an action novel--Gruber either has miraculous recall of dialogue or has reconstructed events to great dramatic effect--and should be a miniseries before the ink on this page is dry.