In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's…

To be honest, I no longer remember why I got this to begin with, and on reading it, I don't think it manages to get close to the lurid, engaging entertainment that was The Devil in the White City. I think that Larson really wants to sell Dodd and his family as these American castaways in a rapidly deteriorating Germany, but their lives just seem so...unexceptional that one kind of wonders at the end what the point of it all was. Just kind of ok. ( )

I have a difficult time with Larson's books. They are marketed as non-fiction, but I always have some doubt in my mind as to the validity of the facts. He focuses so much on motivations, thoughts, and reactions that I question how he can present it as true. I feel like he might embellish a bit to tell a good story, not what I want in my non-fiction.

I finally had to abandon this one due to the minutiae of details. A laundry list of the china in the Ambassador's house and each item's size did me in.

Gripping and suspenseful, sometimes I broke into a sweat reading this! ( )

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin When I was younger I wasn't much interested in history because I was young.
 
Now that I am older I am filling in the gaps in my education. I guess I have always believed in the idea that "history is written by the victors" and was therefore unreliable.
 
More and more I find myself being drawn to the idea of history through peoples eyes.I came to this book without any idea of what it was about. It was picked simply because it was on the New York Times Bestseller list sometime in the recent past. The story of the posting of the American Consul to Germany prior to WW2. A guy who not first, second or even third choice nor was he rich or connected. An academic by both profession and nature, in 1933 William E Dodd dragged his family off to Berlin to take up the role. Instantly pissing off the existing diplomatic crew by insisting on an economy drive by all concerned. Constantly undermined by his colleagues both at home and abroad he nevertheless did win some people over by his uncompromising stance against the newly formed and growing Nazi Party.It is easy to not understand the actual horror of the Nazis as they did so many big bad things. What I liked about this book was his detailed progressive listing of the big bad things by the many small steps it took to get there. At a time when many visitors to Berlin could not see the oppression of the Jews because it was not really visible as such but implied day and day out. The self-censorship and fear that pervaded this period. It was an insidious, creeping removal of human rights one step at a time by statute, intimidation and terror.Brilliant in the first degree and full of such strange stories and unlikely events. No disappointment here at all, sad, moving and informative. I'm ready for the test right now! ( )

Erik Larson has a gift for bringing history to life by providing a close-up view of people's lives during a tumultuous period.

While I always enjoy his writing, this was not one of my favorite Larson books, largely due to our focal point, the Dodd family. William Dodd was perhaps the dullest man to ever have a prominent role in history, and his daughter Martha was a flighty, superficial socialite. His almost morose personality contrasting with her exuberant love for blond men was the most interesting thing about them.

Despite this, the book does offer fascinating insight into how and why the US took so long to take a stand against the decimation of the Jewish people. William Dodd was a man of tremendous southern pride, at a time when racial purity laws prevented relationships between blacks and whites, and lynchings still occurred in the deep south. Early on, he seemed to feel a kind of camaraderie with Germans who wanted racial purity of their own.

I wish we'd spent less time with Martha. Her entire existence revolved around dating, sex, parties, and breaking hearts as she moved on to the next man. She wasn't, or at least didn't appear to be, insightful about or even sympathetic to the situation in Germany. Honestly, she grated on my nerves. Still, there's a lot of interesting detail worth reading, especially within the second half of the book.

I listened to this on audio. The narrator does an excellent job with the material. ( )