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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
slow-paced
The book is informative but its too long and the writing style could have been better
slow-paced
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
A flawed book. It's dated -- at one point Shirer equates homosexuals and murderers, and later on makes a tasteless joke at the expense of the Japanese. At least one of the stories told here -- Heydrich's assassination stuck out in my mind, though I'm sure there are more -- is vague and not quite accurate, but I'm willing to chalk that up to information being available today that wasn't when Rise and Fall was published. The subtitle is misleading since this is emphatically a work of journalism, not history. Also for some reason my copy was filled with typos.
For all my complaining, though, its reputation is well deserved. It's an excellent overview of a million stories that themselves deserve book-length tellings. The tagline on the back is "The book that shook the conscience of the world!" Yeah.
For all my complaining, though, its reputation is well deserved. It's an excellent overview of a million stories that themselves deserve book-length tellings. The tagline on the back is "The book that shook the conscience of the world!" Yeah.
DNF at 25%.
This would’ve been my first deep dive into Nazi history, but after half a dozen counts of listing homosexuality in the same breath as murder, and even going as far as attributing Naziism in part to many early Nazis being prone to “sexual perversion”, I started to wonder if this was going to be a reliable history at all.
It’s my fault for not properly researching the book beforehand. It appears the consensus is that it was outdated even upon its release, and in some cases espouses opinions no actual historian has ever supported, grossly misrepresenting the German people in the process. It seems the trilogy by Richard J Evans is the way to go, so I might try that at a later date.
This would’ve been my first deep dive into Nazi history, but after half a dozen counts of listing homosexuality in the same breath as murder, and even going as far as attributing Naziism in part to many early Nazis being prone to “sexual perversion”, I started to wonder if this was going to be a reliable history at all.
It’s my fault for not properly researching the book beforehand. It appears the consensus is that it was outdated even upon its release, and in some cases espouses opinions no actual historian has ever supported, grossly misrepresenting the German people in the process. It seems the trilogy by Richard J Evans is the way to go, so I might try that at a later date.
the homophobia is frustrating when the nazis targeted so many queer people, the author should know better writing this book