What a book ! What an amazing research by Timothy W. Ryback !!! The title of this excellent book is a bit misleading, since it contains a far richer tapestry of material than merely telling us what books Hitler owned and read... So, initially; it was quite boring when I flipped through few pages. Eventually... when I realized there are more than what I hoped for, I get hooked with the book for the past 48 hours...LOL.
He (Hitler) was of course a man known for burning books than collecting them... and yet according to the author's research, he owned an estimated 16,000 volumes by the time he died. If we judge a book by its cover, we should also judge the collector by his collections. In fact, this book is the reason (perhaps inspirations...) why I started my blog on my very personal private library. It came across my mind (the idea to blog it) when I first saw this book in Amazon... Moreover, it is easier to retrace what you read (and what you gain from reading it) from a tapestry of blog. After all, I do not dig through my book shelves that frequent, LOL...
So, this book basically covers the dictator's reading life from World War I to his suicide in 1945. One thing that keeps on pondered me while I digested the whole book is... how did this mighty fella found his time to read so many books??? As according to the author: "... his library grew incrementally... that year, his book collection was among the few notable possessions he recorded on his tax declaration... During the 1930s, Hitler's collection expanded dramatically...". Amazing !!! Take myself and this book as example... it was on my shelf since last year. Yet, now only I have time to sit down and get hooked by it. Yet, we are talking about the collections of books by one of the mighty fella in World War I... The more I think about this, the more I felt guilty about myself.... sigh!!! Want more evidence? Read on... "According to Kubizek, his (Hitler) passion for books have nothing to do with leisure or pleasure. It was deadly serious business..." ~~~ Wow !!!
48 hours to finish this book is consider fast... However, it also lies with the facts that I actually know zero on some of Hitler's collections. Since I do not know some of the books and facts as mentioned, I am not in the right position to rate this book. However, I personally love it as it opens up my mind on one of the mystery guy in World War I. In fact, I love to explore further on the twist and turn in regards to German history during World War I. But, since I am not Hitler and my reading habit has not reach the level of "deadly serious business", I am still stuck with half or semi-literate in this context, LOL. Having said that, this book certainly works as a good motivator for me... I need to speed up my learning process and I need to put extra efforts to make it a "deadly serious business" in the future... Come on, Alex... you can do it !!! LOL...
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