I was privileged to lead the discussion this afternoon at my book club. It was great. The book being discussed was "In the Garden of Beasts, " by Erik Larson. It's about William Dodd, the U.S. ambassador to Germany in 1933.
His job was to keep things cool in order to placate those of us here in the states who wanted to pretend that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy.
We all know how that turned out.
One of the last questions we dealt with was, with our current technology and with the world being flat and all, "Could it happen now?" The overwhelming answer from this group of wise women was "Yes."
And then they cited many places in the world where this kind of tyranny is happening now and we choose to ignore it.
They also discussed the book's title. And talked about other places in the world that look lovely (The Garden) but are governed by Beasts.
"In the Garden of Beasts" is not an easy read. Larsen ends it with 61 pages of footnotes. But, among other things, it's an excellent reminder of how human nature continues to play out in surprising ways.
***
His job was to keep things cool in order to placate those of us here in the states who wanted to pretend that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy.
We all know how that turned out.
One of the last questions we dealt with was, with our current technology and with the world being flat and all, "Could it happen now?" The overwhelming answer from this group of wise women was "Yes."
And then they cited many places in the world where this kind of tyranny is happening now and we choose to ignore it.
They also discussed the book's title. And talked about other places in the world that look lovely (The Garden) but are governed by Beasts.
"In the Garden of Beasts" is not an easy read. Larsen ends it with 61 pages of footnotes. But, among other things, it's an excellent reminder of how human nature continues to play out in surprising ways.
***
