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

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

Like · see review

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

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

Like · see review

Nov 07, 2013 J rated it it was ok

This entire story could have been told in 30 pages. The best part was the epilogue. Disappointing considering how good Devil in the White City was.

Like · see review

Jun 04, 2012 Ken rated it really liked it

Very interesting, absorbing, readable account of what it was like for the US ambassador to Germany during the years of Hitler's rise to power. ...more

Like · see review