In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson captures the events taking place in 1930's Berlin as we follow American Ambassador William Dodd and his family during this tumultous and complex time. Meet Dodd's daughter Martha as she flirts, dances, attends nightclubs and 'salons' and mingles with Gestapo officers and communists, all the while unaware at first (so she says) of the true goings on in Germany. Meet Ambassador William Dodd, the gentle academic historian who wants nothing more than to have time to write his "Old South" epic but spends more and more time defending his beliefs about the dangers of what is happening in Hitler's Germany to his fellow American politicos. This was a fascinating look into what Berlin was like at the start of Hitler's rise to power. Erik Larson is the author of Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck. SG