IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS

amyb

Senior Insider
Just finished this non fiction book about Berlin and Germany during Hitler's rise to power

I loved Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY & also ISAAC'S STORM and could not put them down. This was slower going. Like reading a term paper. But watching Hitler and Germany get away with their crimes against humanity while the world's democracies handled it with a policy of "appeasement" was unbelievably difficult some 70 years after the fact.

The book centers around Wm Dodd,America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany. Lots of documented events reported here. I even learned more historical information in the footnotes and the acknowledgments.

I do recommend it as it provides a look at what can happen if you do not attack a problem or try to remove a tumor before it takes over and destroys the quality of life as you know it.
 
Not yet on THUNDERSTRUCK. What was that about? I did not know about it until I just saw it on the list of his other books in this book.
 
In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.

Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies completed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, "the kindest of men," nearly commits the perfect crime.

Gripping grom the first word, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form.
 
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