In the Garden of Beasts

Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

By: Erik Larson

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Erik Larson has been widely acclaimed as a master of narrative non-fiction, and in his new book, the best-selling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first, Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany”, she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate.

As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance - and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming - yet wholly sinister - Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively listenable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

©2011 Stephen Hoye (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"In this mesmerizing portrait of the Nazi capital, Larson plumbs a far more diabolical urban cauldron than in his bestselling The Devil in the White City... a vivid, atmospheric panorama of the Third Reich and its leaders, including murderous Nazi factional infighting, through the accretion of small crimes and petty thuggery." ( Publishers Weekly)

"By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history….Powerful, poignant…a transportingly true story." ( The New York Times)

"[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)

The Good Enough CliUb

An intriguing story of the US ambassador to Germany in the years when Hitler was amassing and consolidating power. The prescient Ambassador Dodds who knew exactly what Hitler was doing and was brave enough to say so. Sounding the alarm in clear unambiguous prose, Dodd was isolated and chastised by the pervasive influence of the Good Enough Club, a group of career cronies in the US government who eschewed intellectualism and embraced mediocrity.

Not that interesting.

Really a bit boring.

Erik's other books were much better. Martha was a very loose woman.

Disappointed

I am a Larson fan and usually enjoy his books, but this was slow. Most of the storyline focused on boring relationships and very little on the historical aspects.

Best Non-Fiction

I have found Biographies and Non-Fiction audio books the perfect method for getting myself to sleep. The narrator is usually monotoned and the many sporadic details of the text are better than counting sheep. However, I found this story of the last Ambassador to Nazi Germany so rich and riveting. The narration was dynamic and I had a hard time stopping.

So so

I kept trying to rekindle what made devil in the white city so good, but this and the Lusitania story just don’t cut it. He tries to dramatize things that aren’t that shocking, the writing is decent. Not total waste of time but not remarkable. Narration not that much of an improvement

An interesting story but...

I thought this book has possibilities but it turned out to be both boring and inconclusively on some level while it showed the sudden transformation of Weimar Germany into Nazi Germany it seemed unique to watch the American ambassador who was a dreadfully boring man and his family thrust into a new world watching it he transformed around them but they seemed oblivious at first but as it went on they learned to hate the Nazis. This book is worth at least reading through once.

Incredibly well-researched book!

I really enjoyed this book. It was such an interesting glimpse of life in the Nazi era and how things got so bad without any intervention. And no matter what you think of the story, Erik Larson does an incredible amount of research, and it certainly shows. I was sad when the story ended, because I wanted to learn more about what happens afterwards.

Fascsinating narrative but utterly horrifying

A sad tale of Washington prejudice and blindness. A wonderful example of "don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up." The smug superciliousness of the State Dept. was infuriating. The recounting of events in Hitler's takeover was grim. The slow dimunition of the ambassador, sad. Reads like a novel,,sometimes too much so, but on the whole a, good book.

Beast is too gentle.

I thought I knew this era from so many books, documentaries and movies. But this shed more light. Chilling to hear all the components at play. Eric Larson brings you deep inside from all sides.

Too much like today’s political theater

Very scary in the parallels of today’s Democrat party abject disdain for Trump and reality of American Marxism along with the FBI, DOJ, CIA and IRS.