I hated In the Garden of Beasts when I first started reading it. Mainly, I felt deceived. What I knew about the book was that it was the early days of Hitler's regime and life in Berlin was described through the eyes of an American family that was living there at the time. You expect it to be a story told through a family like your own.

What you quickly learn while reading it was that the family was Professor Dob, the American ambassador to Germany who was an idiot and himself anti-Semitic. He brought with him his wife and his floozy daughter who slept with Nazis, Soviet Communists and countless others during her stay.

As the book went on I gradually started to appreciate the historical significance of the work. It was, an accurate portrayal of the times. Dob was after all from the South and his grandparents had been slave owners. During the 1930s America was and would continue for another forty years, persecuting African-Americans.

It was a stark reminder how much of the world was anti-Semitic at the time and howmany Americans were racists in a way we can hardly fathom today.

I realized that I wasn't angry at the book, I was angry at my country. We did nothing to start or even slow down Hitler's progress as he transformed and hypnotized his people. All communication to Dob and instructions from Roosevelt and his administration revolved around collecting from the Germans money that was owed. Never about anything else.

It's a difficult story to read because it's disturbing in so many ways. But it's one of those stories that you reflect on afterwards and grows on you in the days after you finish it.

I've decided that it's a very good book and an important one to read. My only real problem with it is that Erik Larson tries to make the Dob family heros of the book towards the end because in the final days he warned Washington that there would be war and they must do something. Personally, I think that's giving him too much credit because by then it was pretty obvious to everyone. The bottom line is he did nothing the first two years he was there and for that I'm ashamed.

Here's the link to where you can buy it.