You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
major_sholto 's review for:
What a strange time to read this book: smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and hopefully in the final year of Trump's presidency. That is the lens with which I read "In the Garden of the Beasts." It struck me how little has changed in the last 70 to 80 years. We humans blithely live our shallow little existences. We keep busy. We keep our heads down. We take for granted our freedoms and our social "agreements." Then, not so suddenly—because there are always warning signs—we find ourselves in a crisis and our house of cards comes fluttering to the ground.
Adolf Hitler was a virus and the Third Reich was a global pandemic costing the world hundreds of millions of lives. There were symptoms: brutal beatings, persecution of Jews, and a population fervently falling in line. In 1933, academic and historian, William Dodd, the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Germany was a bed-side eyewitness as the Nazi plague took hold of a nation.
As with "The Devil in the White City," Erik Larsen's account is well researched and the narrative is compelling. I really enjoyed learning about the early years of Hitler's rise and consolidation of power.
Adolf Hitler was a virus and the Third Reich was a global pandemic costing the world hundreds of millions of lives. There were symptoms: brutal beatings, persecution of Jews, and a population fervently falling in line. In 1933, academic and historian, William Dodd, the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Germany was a bed-side eyewitness as the Nazi plague took hold of a nation.
As with "The Devil in the White City," Erik Larsen's account is well researched and the narrative is compelling. I really enjoyed learning about the early years of Hitler's rise and consolidation of power.