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A brilliantly original exploration of some of the formative influences in Hitler's life--the books he most revered, and how they shaped the man and his thinking.
Hitler's education and worldview were formed largely from the books in his private library. Recently, hundreds of those books were discovered in the Library of Congress by Timothy Ryback, complete with Hitler's marginalia on their pages--underlines, question marks, exclamation points, scrawled comments. Ryback traces the path of the key phrases and ideas that Hitler incorporated into his writing, speeches, conversations, self-definition, and actions.
We watch him embrace Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the works of Shakespeare. We see how an obscure treatise inspired his political career and a particular interpretation of Ibsen's epic poem Peer Gynt helped mold his ruthless ambition. He admires Henry Ford's anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, and declares it required reading for fellow party members. We learn how his extensive readings on religion and the occult provide the blueprint for his notion of divine providence, how the words of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are reborn as infamous Nazi catchphrases, and, finally, how a biography of Frederick the Great fired the destructive fanaticism that compelled Hitler to continue fighting World War II when all hope of victory was lost.
Hitler's Private Library, a landmark in the study of the Third Reich, offers a remarkable view into Hitler's intellectual world and personal evolution. It demonstrates the ability of books to preserve in vivid ways the lives of their collectors, underscoring the importance of the tactile in the era of the digital. From the Hardcover edition.
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Subjects
Books and reading, Catalogs, Germany, History, Knowledge and learning, Library of Congress, Nonfiction, Library of Congress catalogs, Hitler, adolf, 1889-1945, Germany, history, 1933-1945, Lektüre, Randbemerkung, Amerika Haus Berlin Video Lending Library, Amerika Haus Berlin, New York Times reviewed, Particuliere bibliotheken, Private librariesPeople
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)Times
1933-1945Showing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
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Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life
2010, Penguin Random House
in English
0099532174 9780099532170
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Hitler's Private Library
2008, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
eBook
in English
0307270491 9780307270498
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3
Hitler's private library: The books that shaped the man
2008, Alfred A. Knopf
in English
- 1st ed.
1400042046 9781400042043
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- Created June 23, 2010
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August 4, 2013 | Edited by VacuumBot | Updated format 'E-book' to 'eBook' |
April 3, 2013 | Edited by VacuumBot | Updated format 'eBook' to 'E-book'; Removed author from Edition (author found in Work) |
April 28, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
June 23, 2010 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from marc_overdrive MARC record |