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Trade Paperback
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9780307408853
Overview
Overview
Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers 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 Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the "New Germany," she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance--and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre G ring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the "New Germany," she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance--and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre G ring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Larson, Erik
- ISBN: 9780307408853
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.20 x 1.15
- Number Of Pages: 480
- Publication Year: 2012
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An American family in Hitler's Germany
Andrew W. - 1 year 8 months agoThe Dodd family arrived in a vibrant Berlin early in 1933. The patriarch William E. Dodd has just been appointed the first ambassador to Hitler's Germany. Over the course of the next decade, the Dodds find themselves at the epicenter of Hitler's rise to power. Painstakingly researched, Larson crafts a paranoid narrative that leads to a climax that rivals the best political thrillers. Through the use of personal memoirs, correspondences, and diaries, the reader gets an intimate look into the personal lives of an American family witnessing the events that eventually lead to the Holocaust. Dinner parties with the heads of Hitler's Third Reich, romantic trysts with the leader of the SS, and personal encounters with Hitler himself, are just some of the events that befall the Dodds. In the Garden of Beasts is historical non-fiction at it's most compelling.
HPB Staff Review -
1933 Berlin as it was and what it became.
Frances S. - 5 years 9 months agoErik Larson takes us back to 1933 Berlin, when William E. Dodd, the new American ambassador arrives to represent the United States. Diplomatic affairs mix with intrigue and romance against the backdrop of a world class city in which intellectuals and international figures mix. As Dodd and his daughter come to understand the culture of the Reich, they watch as the government's brutality seeps in to this beautiful city. Dodd is trapped as the American diplomatic community fails to recognize the severity of the situation. As always, Larson draws the reader in to a thoroughly researched page-turner that culminates in a night of violence that changed the course of the world. The question this time isn't how the Germans could have let it happen, but instead how the old guard American diplomats could have ignored Dodd's warnings when Hitler's intent was clear six years before the invasion of Poland.
HPB Staff Review