I read. A LOT. It's my primary form of relaxation and escapism. I have made a few recommendations here and there, but as the heat of summer and the boredom of the offseason set in, I thought maybe an official thread might be worthwhile.
Y'all feel free to jump on in if you read something good or want to comment on something someone else posts.
Here's my current bedside reading:
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
Larson writes non-fiction, and this book takes place in Berlin during the late 1930's. It's based on the lives of the American Ambassador to Germany and his family who spent a year in Berlin as Hitler rose to absolute power.
You have to constantly remind yourself as you read that people then had a vastly different perspective on Hitler than we do with the benefit of hindsight. They thought that conservative forces within the German government would keep Hitler in power, or more likely, kick him out of power all together. Much of the world - even the U.S. - was openly anti-Semitic, and the initial stages of violence against Jews were not viewed with much concern anywhere - including in some American Jewish circles, surprisingly enough. After all the horror of WWI, no one was interested in getting back into it with Germany. FDR certainly did not see such persecution as enough of a reason to even chastise Germany for violation of human rights - but again, that was really not at the front of the public consciousness then like it is now - mainly because the Holocaust taught us what genocide was truly all about, and made subsequent generations sensitive to the first signs of ethnic cleansing. Even when Hitler began to openly re-arm German in direct violation of the treaty to end WWI, no one acted, or even grew concerned. Many people thought the Germans had been humiliated enough, and since they were a sovereign nation, they had that right.
Adding an air of salaciousness to it all was the Ambassador's slutty daughter. She was in her 20s when her father took the post, and so she ran off to Germany to escape a bad, secret marriage. She then proceeded to sleep her way through the SS/SA Officers, including Diehl, and even a commie from the Soviet Embassy. The family socialized and partied with high ranking Nazis - Goering, Himmler, Goebels, and even Hitler - in the name of US - German relations. You can see the progressive fanaticism of the Nazis creep into every encounter the Ambassador has, even though he openly ignored it. The daughter's journals provide a fascinating behind the scenes look at how incredibly naive everyone was about Hitler and his ambitions.
Larson has also written a couple of others, one particularly worth mentioning - Devil in the White City is the story of a serial killer that was preying on people during the Chicago World's Fair. It is such a wild story that you can't believe it is not fiction.
28 Replies
5750 Views