This book tells the story of William Dodd and his family (wife, daughter and son), who is named ambassador to Germany in the 1930s, as Hitler is rising to power. Focusing on Dodd and his daughter Martha, it describes the escalating tensions and violence as Hitler settles into power. Dodd, who quickly becomes upset at the way Hitler is "ruining" his Germany (he went to school there as a college kid), is an early and vocal Hitler opponent, which runs afoul of the establishment, the "Pretty Good Club" of rich, Ivy League educated diplomats.They want him to be quiet and get Germany to do business.

I am a huge Erik Larson fan but this was, I think, one of his weakest. The biggest problem is there really wasn't a focus on a real interesting event, like the Galveston hurricane or the bombing of Britain. It was just the slow burn of the awful Nazi rising. And much like reading about the Reconstruction, you know it is going to end badly and you just see how blind so many of the people going into it are going to be.

So things kind of meandered around. And oh, the purple prose! Maybe he felt like he need to brighten up an awful time in history, but he tried extra hard to write about glorious blue skies and trains looking like toys. I think he was bound and determined to make a book of this research but it really was kind of weak.

Martha, for all her weaknesses, I thought came across as unique. What I was most impressed with is her independence and, to be honest, sexual freedom it seems, which seems like it was so far in the future. I liked how proud she was, although misguided, but her own views and not those of the men around her or even her father. She fell for the Nazi "strength" and only slowly came around to how gross it was.

The other thing that was really gross about this whole time period was the casual antisemitism. I mean, you can believe the awful violent antisemitism of the Nazis, but the casual antisemitism of the US folks was gruesome. "Oh, don't feel bad, Mr. Nazi, we find the Jews to be awfully uppity ourselves but see we can handle it better" isn't really much of a defense. This came up time and time again, about how Dodd's bosses back in Washington were virulent antisemitic, although maybe Roosevelt himself wasn't. Just gross.

So not really great. I have covered this same time period in Shirer's classic "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and I think it is much better and much briefer. I don't think the two "heroes" of this book are that interesting, although Dodd was one of the few early leaders who railed against the Nazis from an early date. Too much appeasement and too much isolationism enabled Hitler's rise, much to all of our chagrin.