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Emily's Reviews > In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
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I guess I could call this a group biography of William Dodd, a mild-mannered Midwestern professor who became US Ambassador to Germany in 1933, and his daughter Martha Dodd, a female playboy who quickly became infatuated with the glamour of Berlin nightlife. It makes for a readable story as well as a discussion of international attitudes (and blindspots) towards the Nazis as they consolidated power. Martha's memoir seems to have been particularly revealing in regard to her initial fascination with the Nazis and subsequent disillusionment. Strangely, though, the book mainly covers the years 1933 and 1934; it makes quick work of the following couple of years even though Dodd served until 1937.

I do think this work was limited by the author's inability to read German. "The Garden of Beasts" is a very silly translation of "Tiergarten." I wonder what else has been misconstrued. For example, he suggests that the surname "Hanfstaengl" is unpronounceable and bizarre, where I think it's not pretty but perfectly normal. He quotes someone describing himself as an "Evangelical Christian"--but I suspect the document said "evangelisch," which is just the German word for Protestant with none of the connotations that "Evangelical" has in the US. I haven't gone to any particular effort to fact-check Larson's German, but I couldn't write a review of this book without pointing out that there were these moments that seemed off, and he seems to have worked almost entirely from English-language sources.

If you're intrigued by the way this book addresses the question of what people could have been thinking in the early years of the Nazi regime, pick up the excellent novel The Invisible Bridge which explores the theme of the looming Nazi threat with artistry, depth, and power.
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Reading Progress

Started Reading
July 2, 2011 – Finished Reading
July 5, 2011 – Shelved

Comments Showing 1-7 of 7 (7 new)

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message 1: by Tony (new)

Tony Thanks for the German lesson. I love stuff like that.


message 2: by Jon (new) - rated it 3 stars

Jon I just finished this book and also gave it three stars for somewhat different reasons. The reservations you mention sort of tickled the back of my mind while I was reading, but they didn't really register until I read your review. Thanks.


message 3: by Tim (new) - rated it 3 stars

Tim great review. the German stuff seems really lazy of him.


message 4: by Elizabeth (new) - added it

Elizabeth My husband's Oma raised my father-in-law in 1930's Berlin. After hearing her first person narratives of what it really was like growing up in 1920's Berlin and 1930's Nazism, I'm picky about the Nazi era historical books I read. Thank you for such a good review. I will look more at The Invisible Bridge.


Virginia Perhaps Larson's translations here & there are clumsy, but the footnotes are plentiful, & the book has a different thrust than a work of historical scholarship. I think title in particular deserves a deeper reading than a silly attempt to translate the word Tiergarten. To me, the reference to the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem in Yeats' ''Second Coming"-- a depiction of the uneasy atmosphere of post-WWI Europe, wherein as an early draft of the poem states, "The good are wavering while the worst prevail"-- is inescapable.


Emily The Yeats comparison is nice, and I do get that that's what he's trying to do. It's just that when someone tries to do some kind of wordplay that relies on not speaking a language fluently, in a language you do speak fluently, it just falls flat. Maybe this is just me--I have a very silly sense of humor, but can't actually find "Lustfahrt" funny anymore.


message 7: by Alan (new)

Alan Chrisman Well said. I'd ask your cat but he/she didn't respond to his/her name.


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