Book Review

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

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Taking a trip through the years of 1933-1937 of Germany and Hitler's rise to becoming the very epitome of evil, the reader is the companion of the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd and his family. Although Dodd did not truly desire to be ambassador and was certainly not the first choice to be appointed, he maintained a firm advocate of democracy and was appalled at conditions during his term. Reading of their daily lives and what was happening in the political arena gives a new perspective to the events that led to the full Nazi takeover of Germany and unimaginable bloodshed. Ambassador Dodd had attended college there and had a continuing fondness for those years, which were so far removed from the place that the country was becoming. In hindsight, we are incredulous as to how Hitler could have totally dominated all around him, but this book reveals how it came about, before anyone could act.



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