William L. Shirer (1904–1993)

This was the choice of our Bancroft 2.0 history book club and this was my fourth (maybe even fifth) and definitely last reading of this classic. It is a great, but not perfect book. Shire could have saved a hundred or more pages by editing his treatment of the political intrigues that preceded Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 and the attempted coups in the last year of the war. But the writing is truly incredible, long, lucid, passionate sentences that almost demand being show more read out lead. And his historical judgments, although made very soon after the fact, are sound. It is impossible not to see the parallels to our recent politics and today Russia has invaded Ukraine. One cannot help but feel that here we go again. The long chapter, The New Order, is in my opinion the best (and most nightmarish) indictment I have ever read and I wish it were on a universal required reading list. It is hard to get one’s head around the cruelty and inhumanity of the leaders of the Third Reich, but I have not the slightest doubt that it could all happen again and it could happen here. show less

You know the story ... or, like me, you *think* you do. And then you get around to taking on this cube of a book. To call it "compulsively readable" is cheap but fairly accurate. Shirer isn't exactly a prose stylist, but he doesn't need to be to tell this story.

As others have pointed out, there are some ... attitudes that, had Shirer been a member of a different generation, he might have edited out. Homosexuality is the most obvious of these. But I'm old enough and have read enough to take show more the book as it is, and value what it provides.

You get ... well, how it all happened, in stunning detail. It is not boring. show less

The title of the book is somewhat misleading, though that doesn't take anything away from it, because it's really both a memoir of Gandhi through a particular time and a memoir of the journalist who covered him at the time. I wanted to learn more about Gandhi because he's a hero of a couple of my own heroes, most notably the late John Lewis. Gandhi's persistent resistance, underestimated by British leaders, changed the face of his nation eventually but also changed the face of international show more struggles for freedom and social justice. The book makes clear that he was a complicated fellow, with his own scandals, but also a giant intellect and keen judge of the character of individuals, as well as groups.

Though not always succeeding in his own struggle for moral and spiritual purity, he followed his satyagraha, or soul-force, to bring behemoths to their knees - civil disobedience; passive resistance; non-cooperation; non-violence; search for truth; search for the essence of the spirit; and search for decency in human interaction.

Though not an exhaustive biography, this book hit just the right note in detail and explanation of the effect Gandhi had on those around him

4 1/2 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended show less

This book is causing me to have a lot of thoughts. Thoughts about
- Effectiveness
- Deception - how easily people are deceived
- How the wicked sew confusion and misunderstanding
- How a person can be an evil genius

“Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave;”
(Joseph show more Smith History, endnote)

Parallels between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump
1. Bully, demean, throw temper tantrums
2. Instill a hatred in the people as a means of rising to and gaining more power
3. In negotiations change your stand without any compunction - be wildly inconsistent
4. Lie repeatedly, regardless of how blatant it is — Sycophants repeat the blatant lies
5. Obfuscate — to encourage their followers and deceive others
6. Throw friends under the bus when the sycophants are no longer useful

I see some historical similarities. In chronological order:
Hitler: I will make Germany great again.
Trump: I will make America great again
Putin: I will make Russia great again.

And from the Afterword:
“This book had a surprising reception. No one—not my publisher, my editor, my agent, my friends—believed that the public would buy a book so long,”
“And though the academic historians, on the whole, were cool to the book and to me (as if I were a usurper with no right to invade their field—to write good history, they said, you had to teach it), there were notable exceptions.”
“In Germany, to put it mildly, the book did not fare very well with the reviewers. The Germans simply could not face up to their past.”
“Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present.” show less