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

Locations
Call Number: 943.086 La, Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / Europe / Germany
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	943.086 La	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / Europe / Germany	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / Europe / Germany	4-week checkout	Due 04-19-2024

Das Vorspiel -- The man behind the curtain -- Into the wood -- House hunting in the Third Reich -- Lucifer in the garden -- How the skeleton arches -- Disquiet -- Berlin at dusk -- When everything changed -- The queer bird in exile -- "Table talk".
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.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

fascinating submitted by unknown on June 13, 2011, 7:16pm Larson has once again produced a fascinating piece of non fiction

cool submitted by tcaldera97 on June 22, 2011, 2:25pm cool

Okay Book submitted by denisemw on July 15, 2011, 7:53pm Not as riveting as Larson's others books, perhaps due to the political events surrounding the main characters. Main characters (family) are interesting and their personas/stories are very well told.

good submitted by shailu on August 1, 2011, 3:50pm good book

Compelling submitted by Beth Manuel on June 15, 2012, 2:34pm I've always wondered what Americans knew or thought of Hitler before he made his rise to power. I found this book very interesting and hard to put down.

Interesting to Read with Hindsight, Or, COME ON, MARTHA! submitted by Sara W on July 31, 2012, 7:06am The premise of this book is excellent - an American academic is named ambassador to Berlin in the early 1930s after Hitler's rise to chancellor. This places an absolutely green diplomat as the US representative in a city that is about to wreak havoc across Europe and attempt to wipe out an entire race of people. Needless to say, he's not great at his job.

Ambassador Dodd takes his wife and two adult children, Bill and Martha to Berlin with him - calling this the experience of a lifetime. In reality, he entered into the diplomatic corps hoping to have more free time to dedicate to his multi-volume work on the history of the American South. It begins to be impossible not to roll one's eyes at the repeated mention of Dodd's beloved "Old South" and his irresponsible folly in taking on an ambassadorship as a means to gain free time.

Much of the story centers on Martha, who eventually sees the light, but begins her journey simply infatuated with the lovely progress the Nazi party is making and all the well-mannered, interesting people she meets at parties. She becomes romantically entangled with a fair number of these gentlemen, including the head of the Gestapo, a Russian who isn't at all what he seems and practically everyone else who crosses her path. Oh Martha. Have some self-respect.

The premise is interesting but the telling is quite drawn out and I struggled to relate to these characters who were doing so little and behaving so foolishly when I know all the time what's coming and how incredibly world-changing it's going to be. For example, Ambassador Dodd dislikes the Nazis and registers his disagreement with their violence and their politics by not going to their dinner parties. You tell 'em, Dodd!

There are interesting details and glimpses into life in the Nazi ranks and as a German citizen at this time in history, but as a whole I found that the book dragged and the characters were beyond maddening. Still, Erik Larson is a good writer and I'll always be interested to learn about his latest subject.

Intriguing submitted by Xris on August 6, 2018, 11:40pm Props to Eric Larson for all of the research he did to find all the letters, diaries, etc. that helped him form this book. It was a very interesting part of history that I'm glad I learned about. Sometimes when I was reading it, descriptions of the government in Germany or of its leaders made me think of the current Trump administration. It was great that Dodd was a historian and could see how things were going wrong in Nazi Germany, because of what he'd learned from Rome and France, but too bad no one believed him or did anything about it. I'll have to find his other books and read them soon!

The book got a TON of awards. It's well written but too sensationalist for my taste, who cares about that bimbo? submitted by Tassos on March 9, 2024, 9:24am I enjoyed reading bits and pieces of this book, by now I probably read two thirds of it, but because of my irregular reading style, I started reading the same pages again, which is very wasteful and annoying, so I will return the book before its due date, I think I have seen most it has to offer by now.

The book got a TON of awards. I like the author's other books too, but would really WISH that 1. He DID put a photo section in it (he purposely does not, so we get the picture HE wants us to get, and NOT the real people in his book AS THEY LOOKED THEN, and 2. That he skipped all that sensationalist BULLSHIT about the Ambassador's slut of a daughter and her Nazi boyfriends, AND GOT SERIOUS ABOUT THE REAL HISTORY HERE. But most readers probably prefer the BS, and he is no fool, he wants to make money selling more copies, hence this PIECE OF CRAP instead. Right, idiots?