In the Garden of Beasts
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
Ratings98
Average rating3.6
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.
I'm late reading this book, but it rings several bells in the aftermath of Donald Trump's rise to power in the United States. Are we seeing the advent of another Hitler? It's hard to ignore the obvious parallels, and I hope that the American people will be brave enough to stop him if he moves any further toward dictatorship. People in the 1930s ignored Ambassador Dodd's warnings. I hope we don't repeat that mistake.
I know Erik Larson's work. I've read Isaac's Storm and Devil in the White City and I loved both of those nonfiction books.
And so I had expectations for this book. They were met. And exceeded.
Garden of the Beasts, like the other Larson books I've read, is a powerful story that was unfamiliar to me prior to reading the books. A naive American family in the middle of Nazi Germany as the country moves closer and closer to insanity...it's a story that begs to be told.
Larson was the perfect person to tell this story. His writing style is a wonderful mix of intelligence and readability. I flew through the pages of this book, but the book was no Oreo cookie, gobbled up in one delicious bite, but forgotten a few hours later. Instead, the book left me thinking about the characters for many days after I finished the book.
As with all of Larson's books, I found the subject matter so fascinating, I couldn't believe I didn't know this story already. Even the footnotes are worth reading.