In New York Diaries, Editor Teresa Carpenter has compiled diary entries of residents and visitors to New York City from the early 1600s to the present. Starting on January 1, and continuing day by day throughout the year, she selects a few entries from the writings of a wide range of New Yorkers.
New York Diaries is the perfect bedtime read—engrossing, but no pesky plot line to remember the next day!
Image via Wikipedia
To an outsider, Berlin in 1933 appears to function like any other cosmopolitan European city. You can stay at The Hotel Adlon, stroll the famous Tiergarten, and enjoy a coffee at the Romanisches Café. The incessant saluting among German citizens is odd, but it is unlikely that it interrupts your enjoyment of the city.
What the casual visitor to Berlin doesn’t see is the systematic dismantling of personal freedoms, especially against Jews. That you notice only if you reside in Berlin, for example, as the U.S. Ambassador.
In his latest non-fiction book, In the Garden of Beasts, author Erik Larson (Devil in the White City) tells the story of William E. Dodd who served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937.
As a University of Chicago history professor with an expertise in the American South, Dodd is an unlikely choice for Ambassador. Lacking an independent income or social connections, he certainly doesn’t fit in with the other members of the pretty good club, the insider nickname for the Foreign Service. However, he speaks German, is a loyal Democrat, and no one else wants the job.
Despite his lack of experience, Dodd catches on quickly to Germany’s expansionist agenda, but in part due to his outsider status, his concerns are either ignored or ridiculed by the Roosevelt administration.
On the other hand, his twenty-four-year-old daughter Martha who accompanies her parents to Berlin embraces the “New Germany” whole heartedly. She socializes extensively with Nazi officials such as Rudolf Diels and is even suggested as an appropriate girlfriend for Hitler. (Of her meeting with Hitler, she writes, the mustache “didn’t seem as ridiculous as it appeared in pictures.”) Somewhat belatedly Martha shuns the German leadership as well.
After witnessing incidents ranging from the merely annoying to shockingly atrocious, the Dodd family is not unhappy to depart Germany in December of 1937.
In the Garden of Beasts is a fascinating portrait of the critical early years of Hitler’s government and offers some insight into why the rest of the world didn’t notice (or chose not to notice) until too late the threat posed by Nazi Germany.
Citizens of London is an account of the relationship between the Americans and British during WWII with an emphasis on the men who cultivated the alliance prior to the US’s official entry into the war.
The most influential of these men were the charismatic Edward R. Murrow, head of CBS News in Europe, ambitious millionaire Averell Harriman, head of the Lend-Lease program, and John Gilbert Winant, the idealistic US Ambassador to Britain.
The book is at its best when covering the political and personal machinations in which these three men engaged during their time in Europe. (All were romantically involved with members of Winston Churchill’s family.) Of the three, Winant is the one history seems to have forgotten, and his story is fascinating, and a little sad.
Enjoyable and a must read for WWII aficionados. I also highly recommend Olson’s book, Troublesome Young Men.
Having enjoyed Vershese’s other books, My Own Country and Cutting For Stone, I was delighted when my friend Olivia lent me The Tennis Partner, Vershese’s non-fiction account of his friendship with a fellow doctor and addict. Not as griping as My Own Country, but equally chilling. I zipped thru it!
After much spirited discussion, the NCN Book Club finalized our 2012 reading list last month. Why don’t you read along with us?
The NCN Book Club 2012 Reading List
|
Title |
Author | Genre | Locale |
|
The Buddha in the Attic |
Julie Otsuka | Fiction | USA |
|
Peace Like a River |
Leif Enger | Fiction | Minnesota c. 1962 |
|
El Narco |
Ioan Grillo | Non-Fiction | Mexico |
|
Still Life |
Louise Penny | Mystery | Quebec |
|
Thinking Fast & Slow |
Daniel Kahneman | Business | |
|
City of Thieves |
David Benioff | Fiction | Leningrad during the siege |
|
Warmth of Other Suns |
Isabel Wilkerson | Non-Fiction | USA 1915-1970 |
|
The All of it |
Jeannette Haien | Fiction | Ireland |
|
The Tiger |
John Vaillant | Non-Fiction | Russia |
|
The Submission |
Amy Waldman | Fiction | Contemporary USA |
|
Country of my Skull |
Antjie Krog | Non-Fiction | S. Africa |
Robert Massie (Catherine the Great) and Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus) are the Salon@615 visiting authors at the Nashville Public Library this month.
For more information about the Massie and Morgenstern events, click here.
Salon@615 is a partnership among Nashville Public Library, Humanities Tennessee, the Nashville Public Library Foundation, and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
Authors visit the Main Library for a talk or reading followed by a book signing.
Past Salon@615 authors include: Hampton Sides, Jean Auel, Andrea Wulf, Erik Larson, Madison Smartt Bell, Meg Cabot, Will Kaufman, and Ann Patchett.
When in NYC last month, I visited my new favorite bookstore, Crawford Doyle. In addition to the usual bestsellers, CD offers a carefully curated selection of books not readily found at Costco or B&N. I scooped up the following four books immediately!
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
Inspired by The Ambassadors, Foreign Bodies is the story of schoolteacher Bea Nightingale. At the behest of her bossy brother, Bea travels to Europe to retrieve brother’s errant son and is irrevocably changed by the experience.
Author Cynthia Ozick is hardly an unknown writer (she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Man Booker International Prize,) but I wasn’t familiar with her work. Having enjoyed this polished and poignant novel, I look forward to reading Ozick’s other novels.
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson
Lynne Olson’s previous nonfiction book, Troublesome Young Men, is one of my favorites, so I eagerly added this to my purchases.
And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding
How did the artists of Paris respond to the German occupation? For many it was business as usual. Theaters, music halls, opera houses, haute couture businesses, and movie theaters reopened soon after the French surrender.
The creative community’s relationship with the occupiers not only shaped the cultural life of the city, but influenced each artist’s creative output, lifestyle, and reputation for years.
Westwood by Stella Gibbons
Stella Gibbons is best known (and often solely known) for her hugely successful comic novel Cold Comfort Farm. (Also a wonderful 1995 BBC film) In fact, Gibbons wrote 20 more novels one of which is Westwood. 
Lots of books under the tree at #108! Here is what I’ll be reading over the next few months.
The Litigators by John Grisham
I’ve almost finished this one. Classic Grisham—underdog young lawyer triumphs over duplicitous colleagues and corporations.
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
A master of narrative nonfiction, Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City,) has written the story of American ambassador William Dodd and his family’s experiences in Berlin in 1933.
One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown
In addition to a distinguished literary career, Welty was a passionate gardener. This beautifully illustrated book is interspersed with passages from Welty’s personal letters and unpublished writings.
V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
Santa didn’t realize that I’d already read the latest Grafton! I think it is one of Grafton’s best Kinsey Millhone novels.
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
Can’t wait to read the biography of Russia’s brilliant and ambitious empress by the author of Peter the Great and Nicholas and Alexandra.
Yeah! The Holiday Gift Guide-Books was published in The New York Times yesterday.
Sooooo many good reads, but here are a few I am considering as gifts or (more likely) for my own library!
FICTION
You Know When The Men Are Gone, a short story collection by Siobhan Fallon about military spouses.
The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht’s debut novel about a politically unstable Balkan country.
NONFICTION
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family In Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson (Devil in the White City,) a novelistic nonfiction account of the experiences of the U.S. Ambasador to Berlin William Dodd & his family in 1933.
HOME
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, Michael Pollan’s updated manifesto.
The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How To Decorate & Live Well by the founding editor of the late lamented Domino magazine, Deborah Needleman.
COFFEE TABLE
Chicks With Guns, a self explanatory book of photographs whose title alone makes it worth a look!
Temples of Cambodia: The Heart Of Angkor, lush photographs, perfect for the traveler, armchair or otherwise.
If you are interested in the European financial crisis or merely a student of human behavior, I recommend Michael Lewis’s book Boomerang.
Lewis’s forte is telling a complex story largely through profiles of a few outrageous or misunderstood participants. He did it with baseball (Moneyball), the U.S. mortgage crisis (The Big Short), and football (The Blind Side).
In Boomerang, Lewis explores the financial collapse in Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and almost as an afterthought, the U.S.
Although the cheap credit mania of the early 21st C has many unforeseen financial consequences, Lewis slyly points out that the behaviors and subsequent reactions of Icelandic fishermen, Greek monks, Irish real estate developers, and German financiers are entirely consistent with their national characters.
Because Boomerang is a collection of essays, some of which appeared previously in Vanity Fair, it doesn’t have the strong narrative pull of Lewis’s other books. But it is a quick read that will enhance your understanding of the current economic mess in Europe.
