This is Michael Maxwell with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I am recommending Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945 by Julia Boyd.
We so often engage with World War II in its historical context via museum exhibits, textbooks, and black and white images that it can be easy to forget how recent these events are in the grand scheme of things until one encounters the distinctly modern voices of people who lived through the era and spoke about the atrocities they witnessed firsthand as they unfolded.
Julia Boyd’s Travelers in the Third Reich is full of these firsthand accounts, and Boyd has ingeniously curated a broader swath of witnesses than I’ve ever heard from in any WWII media before. Readers meet African Americans, Chinese nationals, and foreign wives of German men who all lived in Germany during the Nazis’ rise to power. Their perspectives on what was happening around them convey both on-the-ground facts about fascism’s takeover and feelings of loss, ambivalence, and even excitement about the moments they were living through.
Whether you consider yourself a huge WWII history buff or you enjoy reading historical fiction novels set in this era, you’ll appreciate the new vantage points and perspectives Julia Boyd shares in this must- read book that’s so accessibly written it almost feels like an oral history. The thrilling pace of Travelers in the Third Reich will even draw in readers who don’t normally turn to nonfiction.
Check out Travelers in the Third Reich: the Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945 by Julia Boyd at the Sioux City Public Library today!
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