Saturday, September 17, 2011

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Author: Erik Larson
Stars: 4
Review by: Jelsey
Destination: Germany


 An interesting and frightening non-fiction book about the rise of Hitler in the 1930s.  It follows the career of William Dodd, a college professor who was named Ambassador to Germany in 1933 by President Franklin Roosevelt, and moved to Berlin with his wife and two grown children.  A fascinating story of an era that led Europe, and ultimately the world, into World War II.

1 comment:

UK said...

Best strict history I've read since Devil in the White City, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Particularly enlightening is the feeling -- as you're reading -- that the U.S. was ridiculously isolationist and the State Department full of country-club socialites. Although the end of WWI left participants exhausted, depressed and bereft, it also left them unwilling to "rock the boat" as Hitler and his facists rose to power. Larson shows us this again and again... and the world inevitably is sucked into World War.