In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Erik Larson has a knack for finding intimate, personal stories wrapped in and around larger, well-known events. A year in the lives of William Dodd, Ambassador to Germany in 1933 and 1934 and his free-spirited daughter, Martha, create the backdrop for the rise of Hitler's power in his latest book, In the Garden of Beasts.

Dodd, head of the History Department of the University of Chicago, wasn't the usual sort of man selected to be Ambassador in those days. He pulled himself up from a lower class southern background through education and hard work. He didn't have a famous name or family fortune. But then, his wasn't the first name on Roosevelt's Ambassador to Germany list either.

As readers we have the unfair advantage of hindsight. Following the Dodd family's interaction with German policy and society feels a lot like watching a film with innocent, hapless coeds getting ready for a dance knowing that an ax-murderer is lurking outside.

Martha Dodd, a complex piece of work, cannot be called innocent, having had affairs with Carl Sandburg, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe and countless other men before she left Chicago. On another level, however, her innocence showed. She was unable to anticipate the horrors of Nazi Germany. But she was not alone. The primary objective the State Department gave her father was to ensure the repayment of Germany's war debt. He was to cozy up to Hitler's cronies and lean on them for payment.

While Martha conducted affairs of the heart with Rudolf Diels, first head of the Gestapo, Boris Vinogradov, a Soviet intelligence official, and many others, her father did little to get the American banks their money and nothing at all to push Germany back from military readiness. She did eventually lose her infatuation for the fresh-faced German youth rebuilding Germany's economy and war machines, and grow to fear and loathe the terror filled acts of the SA, SS, and Gestapo. William lectured the Germans on Jeffersonian Democracy, refused to attend Hitler's political rallies, and battled with his own state department peers.

Because Larson used the Dodd's words, letters, and diaries and letters from friends to tell his story there is some repetition as the same scene is told through various viewpoints. Still, there's a freshness that comes from people actually reporting what is going on at the time it's happening. Larson's smooth storytelling technique makes In the Garden of Beasts as easy to read as a novel, while the subject matter is so grisly and intense as to make you want to lay it aside. I highly recommend this book, but it won't be the easiest book you'll read this year.