Fear was my gateway to becoming interested in stories. My nanny growing up, a Scottish expat named Jackie with a fox pelt of red hair and a manic...
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Subtitled “Love, Terror, and an America Family in Hitler’s Berlin,” the love and terror in Erik Larson’s The Garden of Beasts is carefully muted and well-hidden, clinically observed through a historian’s eyes and the writings of the various characters. It’s fascinating to look at Hitler’s Germany from a different point of view as World War II approaches. But the reader is kept safely at arm’s length, as if watching a silent movie with solemn voice-over. The result is a powerful mix of the well-known and predictable with those small surprises and insights of individual lives.
The US Ambassador Dodd is torn between a historian’s recognition of truths that must be slowly told and a politician’s need for instant words and instant responses. Seen as alternately weak and strong, he walks a fine line and annoys almost everyone, eventually destroying his career on a raft of good intentions. Meanwhile his daughter makes decisions based on feelings, while her emotions seem to rely on the whim of the moment. We know she’s in love because she hangs out with the same guy too much and her diary says she likes him. We know she’s not in love because she’s going out with someone else. Almost a distraction at the start of the book, her shifting relationships eventually reflect the shifting tides of public opinion, leaving her always a few steps to the side where it’s never quite safe.
The “Jewish problem” is told unflinchingly, with honest recognition of glass houses on both sides of the pond. There’s a quiet recognition of how quickly society's acceptably wrong attitudes become vicious cruelty. Tolerance and good intentions blind many to what’s really going on. Fanaticism becomes something to be aspired to. Wrong becomes right if the purpose seems good. And surely no true leader should be swayed by the opinions of the rest of the world, or so they'd have us believe.
The tragedy is well-known as familiar players take the stage. But the underlying fall of normalcy is what Erik Larson’s book makes so clear. The reader doesn’t enter into anybody’s lives, anymore than Dodd and his family entered into the lives of the German people when they traveled there. But we observe and we draw our own conclusions, hopefully ones that might help us see more clearly in the world of today. Genuinely, but not emotionally involving, The Garden of Beasts sheds light on the past and invites reflection on the present with clear historical research and quiet sympathy for Dodd, trapped on the border where beasts roamed free.
Disclosure: We’re reading this for our book group.
Victoria R Copelton, January 19, 2013 (view all comments by Victoria R Copelton)
the reality of life. During Hitler's Berlin is vividly portrayed. ambassadors have to be careful even though this one takes chances in a time when no one escapes the scrutiny of the complex system of Berlin spies in wwII. Reading this book brought me into that time period with the safety of a spectator. Because It is clear that I would be scared to death to actually be there in person. There were many brave souls who show up in this book...prepared to be caught by a paranoid regime and their courage is striking
mikeczyz, January 16, 2013 (view all comments by mikeczyz)
I just started and finished this book. A very interesting account of pre-WW2 Berlin as told through the eyes of the US ambassador to Germany and his daughter. I thought it was going to be dry and a bit of a chore to plow through, but was pleasantly surprised. There were very few ZZZZZ moments and it really did a lot to help explain to me how the monster known as Hitler came to power. Highly recommended.
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M Rotter, January 2, 2013 (view all comments by M Rotter)
This book is the fascinating story of the American ambassador to Germany living in Berlin on the eve on the Second World War. It was terrifying reading it in hindsight, knowing that the people that Ambassador Dodd was socializing with were the authors of World War II, the Holocaust and it's aftermath. It's a good story and well written.
Deek Rivers, January 1, 2013 (view all comments by Deek Rivers)
I'm a slow reader by nature. I'll start a book, read a little, put it down, return to it, rinse and repeat. This one was different. I've never come across a book that had the particular framework as this one: the story of an American family, transplanted to Germany, the father hastily appointed ambassador to Germany as Hitler's rise to power takes place. I finished it late into the evening of the second day, and can recommend it as a engrossing story of national events and family dynamics; it felt like the author was asking me, what would you do if you were in their place?
"Review"
by The New York Times Book Review,
"Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds' intimate witness to Hitler's ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller...a fresh picture of these terrrible events."
"Review"
by The New York Times,
"By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history....Powerful, poignant...a transportingly true story."
"Review"
by Financial Times,
"Tells a fascinating story brilliantly well."
"Review"
by Christian Science Monitor,
"Highly compelling....Larson brings Berlin roaring to life in all its glamor and horror...a welcome new chapter in the vast canon of World War II."
"Review"
by Newsweek,
"A stunning work of history."
"Review"
by Louisville Courier Journal,
"A gripping, deeply-intimate narrative with a climax that reads like the best political thriller, where we are stunned with each turn of the page."
"Review"
by Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
"Electrifying reading...fascinating."
"Review"
by Asbury Park Press,
"Larson's latest chronicle of history has as much excitement as a thriller novel, and it's all the more thrilling because it's all true."
"Review"
by Toronto Globe and Mail,
"A superb book...nothing less than masterful."
"Review"
by Portland Herald,
"Even though we know how it will end — the book's climax, the Night of the Long Knives, being just the beginning, this is a page-turner, full of flesh and blood people and monsters too, whose charms are particularly disturbing."
"Review"
by Maclean's Magazine,
"Larson succeeds brilliantly...offers a fascinating window into the year when the world began its slow slide into war."
"Review"
by BookReporter.com,
"Erik Larson tackles this outstanding period of history as fully and compellingly as he portrayed the events in his bestseller, The Devil In The White City. With each page, more horrors are revealed, making it impossible to put down. In the Garden of Beasts reads like the true thriller it is."
"Review"
by Cleveland Plain Dealer,
"Larson's strengths as a storyteller have never been stronger than they are here, and this story is far more important than either The Devil in the White City or Thunderstruck. How the United States dithered as Hitler rose to power is a cautionary tale that bears repeating, and Larson has told it masterfully."
"Review"
by The Washington Post,
"Reads like an elegant thriller...utterly compelling...marvelous stuff. An excellent and entertaining book that deserves to be a bestseller, and probably will be."
"Review"
by Pittsburgh Review,
"Larson's scholarship is impressive, but it's his pacing and knack for suspense that elevates the book from the matter-of-fact to the sublime."
"Review"
by People, Starred Review,
"A master at writing true tales as riveting as fiction."
"Review"
by Associated Press,
"Larson has done it again, expertly weaving together a fresh new narrative from ominous days of the 20th century."
"Review"
by Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair,
"[L]ike slipping slowly into a nightmare, with logic perverted and morality upended....It all makes for a powerful, unsettling immediacy."
"Review"
by The Chicago Sun-Times,
"Dazzling....Reads like a suspense novel, replete with colorful characters, both familiar and those previously relegated to the shadows. Like Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories or Victor Klemperer's Diaries, In the Garden of Beasts is an on-the-ground documentary of a society going mad in slow motion."
"Review"
by The Seattle Times,
"[G]ripping, a nightmare narrative of a terrible time. It raises again the question never fully answered about the Nazi era — what evil humans are capable of, and what means are necessary to cage the beast."
"Review"
by Publishers Weekly (Starred Review),
"In this mesmerizing portrait of the Nazi capital, Larson plumbs a far more diabolical urban cauldron than in his bestselling The Devil in the White City...a vivid, atmospheric panorama of the Third Reich and its leaders, including murderous Nazi factional infighting, through the accretion of small crimes and petty thuggery."
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