In the Garden of Beasts - Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Zusatztext 43058027 Informationen zum Autor ERIK LARSON is the author of the national bestsellers Thunderstruck ! The Devil in the White City ! and Isaac's Storm . ErikLarsonBooks.com From the Hardcover edition. CHAPTER 1 Means of Escape The telephone call that forever changed the lives of the Dodd family of Chicago came at noon on Thursday, June 8, 1933, as William E. Dodd sat at his desk at the University of Chicago. Now chairman of the history department, Dodd had been a professor at the university since 1909, recognized nationally for his work on the American South and for a biography of Woodrow Wilson. He was sixty-four years old, trim, five feet eight inches tall, with blue-gray eyes and light brown hair. Though his face at rest tended to impart severity, he in fact had a sense of humor that was lively, dry, and easily ignited. He had a wife, Martha, known universally as Mattie, and two children, both in their twenties. His daughter, also named Martha, was twenty-four years old; his son, William Jr.--Bill--was twenty-eight. By all counts they were a happy family and a close one. Not rich by any means, but well off, despite the economic depression then gripping the nation. They lived in a large house at 5757 Blackstone Avenue in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, a few blocks from the university. Dodd also owned--and every summer tended--a small farm in Round Hill, Virginia, which, according to a county survey, had 386.6 acres, “more or less,” and was where Dodd, a Jeffersonian democrat of the first stripe, felt most at home, moving among his twenty-one Guernsey heifers; his four geldings, Bill, Coley, Mandy, and Prince; his Farmall tractor; and his horse-drawn Syracuse plows. He made coffee in a Maxwell House can atop his old wood-burning stove. His wife was not as fond of the place and was more than happy to let him spend time there by himself while the rest of the family remained behind in Chicago. Dodd named the farm Stoneleigh, because of all the rocks strewn across its expanse, and spoke of it the way other men spoke of first loves. “The fruit is so beautiful, almost flawless, red and luscious, as we look at it, the trees still bending under the weight of their burden,” he wrote one fine night during the apple harvest. “It all appeals to me.” Though generally not given to cliche, Dodd described the telephone call as a “sudden surprise out of a clear sky.” This was, however, something of an exaggeration. Over the preceding several months there had been talk among his friends that one day a call like this might come. It was the precise nature of the call that startled Dodd, and troubled him. For some time now, Dodd had been unhappy in his position at the university. Though he loved teaching history, he loved writing it more, and for years he had been working on what he expected would be the definitive recounting of early southern history, a four-volume series that he called The Rise and Fall of the Old South, but time and again he had found his progress stymied by the routine demands of his job. Only the first volume was near completion, and he was of an age when he feared he would be buried alongside the unfinished remainder. He had negotiated a reduced schedule with his department, but as is so often the case with such artificial ententes, it did not work in the manner he had hoped. Staff departures and financial pressures within the university associated with the Depression had left him working just as hard as ever, dealing with university officials, preparing lectures, and confronting the engulfing needs of graduate students. In a letter to the university’s Department of Buildings and Grounds dated October 31, 1932, he pleaded for heat in his office on Sundays so he could have at least one day to devote to uninterrupted writing. To a friend he described his position as “embarrassing.” Ad...

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'"By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history....Powerful, poignant...a transportingly true story."-- The New York Times"Tells a fascinating story brilliantly well."-- Financial Times"Highly compelling...Larson brings Berlin roaring to life in all its glamour and horror...a welcome new chapter in the vast canon of World War II."-- Christian Science Monitor"Terrific."-- Los Angeles Times"A stunning work of history."-- Newsweek"Larson has meticulously researched the Dodds' intimate witness to Hitler's ascendancy and created an edifying narrative of this historical byway that has all the pleasures of a political thriller....a fresh picture of these terrrible events."-- The New York Times Book Review"Larson has taken a brilliant idea and turned it into a gripping book."-- Women's Wear Daily"Harrowingly suspenseful." Vogue.com"A gripping, deeply-intimate narrative with a climax that reads like the best political thriller, where we are stunned with each turn of the page."-- Louisville Courier Journal"Electrifying reading...fascinating." Minneapolis Star-Tribune"Larson's latest chronicle of history has as much excitement as a thriller novel, and it's all the more thrilling because it's all true."-- Asbury Park Press"A superb book...nothing less than masterful."-- Toronto Globe and Mail"Even though we know how it will end - the book's climax, the Night of the Long Knives, being just the beginning, this is a page-turner, full of flesh and blood people and monsters too, whose charms are particularly disturbing."-- Portland Herald"Larson succeeds brilliantly...offers a fascinating window into the year when the world began its slow slide into war."-- Maclean's Magazine"Erik Larson tackles this outstanding period of history as fully and compellingly as he portrayed the events in his bestseller, THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. With each page, more horrors are revealed, making it impossible to put down. IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS reads like the true thriller it is."-- BookReporter.com"Larson's strengths as a storyteller have never been stronger than they are here, and this story is far more important than either "The Devil in the White City" or "Thunderstruck." How the United States dithered as Hitler rose to power is a cautionary tale that bears repeating, and Larson has told it masterfully."-- Cleveland Plain Dealer"Reads like an elegant thriller...utterly compelling... marvelous stuff. An excellent and entertaining book that deserves to be a bestseller, and probably will be."- The Washington Post"Larson's scholarship is impressive, but it's his pacing and knack for suspense that elevates the book from the matter-of-fact to the sublime."-- Pittsburgh Review"A master at writing true tales as riveting as fiction."-- People (3 1/2 stars)"Larson has done it again, expertly weaving together a fresh new narrative from ominous days of the 20th century."-- Associated Press""Mesmerizing...cinematic, improbable yet true."-- Philadelphia Inquirer"[L]ike slipping slowly into a nightmare, with logic perverted and morality upended....It all makes for a powerful, unsettling immediacy."--Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair"Dazzling....Reads like a suspense novel, replete with colorful characters, both familiar and those previously relegated to the shadows. Like Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories or Victor Klemperer's Diaries, IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS is an on-the-ground documentary of a society going mad in slow motion."-- The Chicago Sun-Times"[G]ripping, a nightmare narrative of a terrible time. It raises again the question never fully answered about the Nazi era-what evil humans are capable of, and what means are necessary to cage the beast."-- The Seattle Times"In this mesmerizing portrait of the Nazi capital, Larson plumbs a far more diabolical urban cauldron than in his bestselling The Devil in the

Product details

• Authors: Erik Larson
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.05.2011
• EAN: 9780307952424
• ISBN: 978-0-307-95242-4
• No. of pages: 448
• Dimensions: 156 mm x 233 mm x 29 mm
• Series: Crown Books
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > 20th century (up to 1945); Non-fiction book