6DRAKE discussion

Sydney Ferrara
6DRAKE
6th Period
12/10/13
In the Garden of Beasts begins with William Dodd. He was a professor at the University of Chicago. This book takes place during the reign of Adolph Hitler. Professor Dodd is an average middle class man with a nice family. He has a wife, Martha and two kids (Martha and William Jr. or Bill). Dodd was a fantastic writer and had immense knowledge of history and anything that had to do with it. His work was very well known around the country. An ambassador position in the middle of Berlin, Germany had opened up. At the time the president was Roosevelt. The President had made a mistake when looking up applicants for the job and accidently chose Dodd. Dodd was not too eager to deal with all the tasks of being an ambassador, but he felt that Germany would be a nice place for him to finish writing his book. Little did the Dodd family know that Hitler’s power would go out the roof. They had to watch the heinous encounters come alive as the Nazi’s tortured the Jews. Their daughter, Martha, (also known as Mattie) was a big flirt throughout the story.
I don’t want to say much more because it’ll give away the rest of it, but all in all this was a very good book. This book would be considered Historical fiction. Everything that Erik Larson wrote was immensely detailed. I felt that this book went at a decent pace; however, there were some parts that seemed to drag on and on. The encounter with the Nazi’s made the book very suspenseful. It is clear that throughout the book Larson did a great job of making everything seem so realistic because all the encounters and time period was very accurate. The only negative comment that I have for this book would be that there were some confusing parts which made it a little difficult to keep up with the story line, but this book was still really good. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about historical encounters and those who have an interest in learning about Hitler during his reign.