Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life

By Timothy Ryback and Timothy W. Ryback

Book Overview

A Washington Post Notable Book With a new chapter on eugenicist Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race In this brilliant and original exploration of some of the formative influences in Adolf Hitler's life, Timothy Ryback examines the books that shaped the man and his thinking. Hitler was better known for burning books than collecting them but, as Ryback vividly shows us, books were Hitler's constant companions throughout his life. They accompanied him from his years as a frontline corporal during the First World War to his final days before his suicide in Berlin. With remarkable attention to detail, Ryback examines the surviving volumes from Hitler's private book collection, revealing the ideas and obsessions that occupied Hitler in his most private hours and the consequences they had for our world. A feat of scholarly detective work, and a captivating biographical portrait, Hitler's Private Library is one of the most intimate and chilling works on Hitler yet written.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307455262
• ISBN13: 9780307455260
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.0"

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.