In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin in Around the World in 80 Books

Apr 29, 2011 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, germany, nonfiction

I thought that this book was very successful at painting a portrait of the strange times in Berlin leading up to WWII.

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Feb 22, 2011 Kay rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, audiobooks, biogr-memoir, world_war_ii

The period this book covers is fascinating. The ambassadorial family in question, unfortunately, much less so. Martha Dodd in particular was unbelievably tiresome, but I gather that she left lengthy, self-absorbed, social-butterfly type memoirs which provided a great deal of the material. Nothing else could possibly account her being one of the two central figures in this book. Neither sluttish Martha nor her dry stick of a father seemed as noteworthy as Larson infers, but it was intriguing to r ...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Erica rated it really liked it

Did not expect to like this book as much as I did. Read it compulsively.
Anything WW2 is not my usual or preferred fare. I picked this up because it was available for rental from WI libraries for my Kindle, and I loved Larson's -Devil in the White City- something fierce. He uses the same narrative approach in this book as he did in DITWC: two separate but interlinked storylines, brief chapters that always end with you wanting more, excellent staging for narrative and historical climax at the appr Did not expect to like this book as much as I did. Read it compulsively.
Anything WW2 is not my usual or preferred fare. I picked this up because it was available for rental from WI libraries for my Kindle, and I loved Larson's -Devil in the White City- something fierce. He uses the same narrative approach in this book as he did in DITWC: two separate but interlinked storylines, brief chapters that always end with you wanting more, excellent staging for narrative and historical climax at the appropriate moment, great research into the most fascinating intricacies of people's lives and the historical moment. A great writer, but not a historian. He's not adding anything new to the historical record, but he's definitely making it immensely more readable. *spoilers from here*

In the Garden of Beasts (an awesome and appropriate title by the way), he tells the story of the Dodd family, the American consulate to Berlin in 1935-6, just as Hitler is coming to power. One storyline is the father/consulate's: his meetings, his troubles, the horrific changes that German culture goes through in a very short time. This was actually the less interesting storyline of the book, but it kept me reading nonetheless. In a book market utterly glutted with personality profiles of Hitler and his top SS and Gestapo men, as well as various battles of WW2 and details of concentration camps, Larson goes for what I find to be the eminently more interesting, and frankly educational, scope. He focuses on the ways in which this American family came to know Berlin and Berliners, and in that way details Germany's larger and more subtle cultural shifts to militarism, racism, and tyranny at its final precipice before one of its darkest moments in history. Great stuff.

The story that found me instantly and constantly addicted, however, is the story of Dodd's adult daughter, Martha. She goes with her family to Berlin after a failed marriage and proceeds to infiltrate its most interesting intellectual and political circles, essentially sleeping her way to the top of the SS, having an affair with an early KGB agent, and other amazing activities. She's a woman of her time but out of her time--a "woman of danger" and smarts and sexual prowess. It takes her a long time to come around to the idea that Nazism was bad, in part because she was having so much fun with its glitterati. But I found myself admiring her, and would love to pick up her memoirs, one of Larson's main primary sources for this work.

Hugely readable. Going to try to convince my book club to read this! ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Astrid Lim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, world-war, second-hand, europe, history

It's not as engaging as The Devil in the White City, because the historical facts are more packed and dry, taken from various letters and diary entries of the people involved. But the idea of writing something that was less known is pretty interesting and I appreciate Larson's efforts to make this book still enjoyable.

The years before World War II were not exposed that much, and the reasons of Hitler's ascent, seeing from different perspectives but mostly from the U.S. Ambassador in Berlin at th ...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Amy Nash Parker rated it really liked it

Great book by a fantastic writer! I was fascinated and instantly hooked into the story of the American ambassador and his family. I was equally horrified to learn details about Hitler's rise to power and how it was allowed to happen. The only part I didn't enjoy was the lengthy descriptions of the daughter's love life. I felt it was appropriate when describing her initial awe of the Hitler-era men and the youthfulness/hope they portrayed, but it got old after a while. ...more

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