In the Garden of Beasts

I feel like I know a decent bit about Germany of this era - not that I have any real level of expertise, but I have studied it as just about much as any historic era and place, and there is a wealth of information and scholarship out there on the subject. This book approached Hitler's Germany from an angle I hadn't considered, and brought numerous events that in my mind had just come to be one after another into a broader context. It showed the gradual rise of the Nazi regime, the events that led to some of those “inevitable” points of interest which are most often listed. There were many more people shaping events than are usually mentioned, and a shocking amount of it comes down to casual interpersonal interactions rather than rigid formal government actions.

It's hard to compare to Devil in the White City, at least in my mind, but when thinking of Larson's work in general, this has not quite as compelling a narrative as that one does. It's thoroughly researched and the history is presented in an easily approached manner, I just never quite got as invested in the “story line” of the main characters.