Fake News is not New

     Living across the street from the public library as a young girl began my love of reading. Those blue, cloth-bound biographies I devoured. Mrs. Yawn, 7th grade English teacher, created reading day on each Friday...catch up on SRA, work ahead, or read. I read, uninterrupted, for a whole class period. Read many historical fiction stories You Were There at ——-, stories of children at historic American events. I relished the Wilders' adventures in their Little House.
    By reading all kinds of material, I learned to love romance as well as research. Reading is a part of me.
    Erik Lawson writes non-fiction. Isaac’s Storm was the first of his books that I read. It’s about the alarm that was raised by a single man who took his job seriously. The time period was early 1900s, decades before the creation of the National Weather Service. The storm/hurricane he warned a region about wiped out Galveston, Tx.
     More recently I read Devil in White City. It’s about a horrid series of events involving architects and others during the building of the White City that showcased Chicago’s World’s Fair. The origin of Ferris’ Wheel...who knew?
     Heavily researched and thoroughly documented, In the Garden of Beasts is slow to develop because of the thoroughness of the telling as it relates to Dodd and his grown daughter, Martha. The book chronicles US ambassador Dodd, a Jeffersonian Democrat and historian, along with his family, during their five years in Berlin, 1933 - 1938.
   It takes a few years and 2/3 of the book for Dodd to see and understand what was happening in Germany and in diplomatic language and fashion he crafted communiques to inform his superiors.

    I’ve always wondered how such atrocities against human beings could take place in a civilized society, in a beautiful country, (with the world watching) and this book lays it bare. ‘Oh, to be a horse in Hitler’s Germany,” where cruelty to animals was against the law while the unchecked underbelly of the German government lay waste, with cruel yet subtle laws, against anyone, any business, any art, music, science from non-Ayrian sources.
     Marlene Dietrich got out of Germany early as did Albert Einstein.

*Have you wondered if American officials knew about the “situation?’
*Do you think about politics, the economy, and how they interplay with foreign policy?
*What were diplomats throughout Europe and elected officials in America thinking as Hitler promised peace and prosperity, all the while violating the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI?

Plenty of opportunity existed to stop Hitler's regime in the early stages of his massive military buildup. So, why didn’t they?

It’s not a book to be read in one sitting.
I borrowed it online in ebook format through Rector Public Library system.