In the Garden of Beasts
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
Ratings72
Average rating3.7
15
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
Ratings72
Average rating3.7
The bestselling author of "Devil in the White City" turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler's rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
Reviews with the most likes.
A particularly disturbing but fascinating book. The sense of unreality pervaded the story, as I could hardly imagine it to be true. A powerful work of nonfiction which brings new perspective on any previous “understanding” of how events leading up to the Second World War passed.
Excellent.
Interesting and engaging and fun to read as well as full of useful information. A little too much is written about the personal life of Dodd's daughter, which in my opinions spills beyond relevant anecdotes into shallow gossip.
But other than this minor flaw, thoroughly enjoyable.
Great book that is well written. At times it seems a little random, as if there weren't enough details known. But still a great (and scary) read.
The author picked a great set of people to write about. The father isn't all that impressed with Germans and the daughter is in bed with a variety of ranking Nazi's, Russian pre-KGB... Between the two you get a great mix of perspectives. And the time period written about was educational.
I knew the war ended around 1945 but didn't know Hitler was put in office in 1933, and was put there by people believing they could control him. That Goebels was incredibly over weight.
