Hitler's Private Library: The Books that Shaped his Life

By Timothy Ryback and Timothy W. Ryback

Book Overview

He was of course a man better known for burning books than collecting them and yet by the time he died aged 56 Adolf Hitler owned an estimated 16 000 volumes - the works of historians philosophers poets playwrights and novelists.

For the first time Timothy W. Ryback offers a systematic examination of this remarkable collection. The volumes in Hitler's library are fascinating in themselves but it is the marginalia - the comments the exclamation marks the questions and underlinings - even the dirty thumbprints on the pages of a book he read in the trenches of the First World War - which are so revealing.

Hitler's Private Library provides us with a remarkable view of Hitler's evolution - and unparalleled insights into his emotional and intellectual world. Utterly compelling it is also a landmark in our understanding of the Third Reich.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099532174
• ISBN13: 9780099532170
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.9" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

To know a person, you must know his/her library.

From Mein Kampf – “I know people who ‘read’ enormously, “Book for book,” letter for letter, yet whom I would not describe as ‘well-read.’ True, they possess a mass of ‘knowledge,’ but their brain is unable to organize and register the material they have taken in… For reading is no end, but a means to an end.” *** Weird, this is what I read in Mein Kampf decades ago, and I found almost the same quote in the book. Someone thinks alike. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.’ Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) supposedly. This book could have easily been just a list of titles. Books are more than just titles. Also, one would be interested in which ones were read. Still, there is something to be said about having the book read or not. Jefferson had 6,000 volumes, I have 10,000 volumes, yet H-i-t-l-e-r had 16,000 volumes. I wonder where he displayed them all. There are a lot of pictures of documents and a few books, but no pictures of his library. Ryback bases most of his research on the 1200 volumes resting in the rare book section of the US Library of Congress. These books were seized by US Army forces at the close of the war. Where is the book now, or what happened to them? The book is more of a superficial biography with a focus on books.