In "In the Garden of Beasts," a nonfiction account of the experiences of an American ambassador to Hitler's Germany, Erik Larson recreates the haunting atmosphere of pre-war Nazi Germany, a country in which industrialism and modernity would soon give way to blood and terror. Larson's account of the ambassadorship of William E. Dodd, an academic who dared to stand up to the Nazis even as his flamboyant daughter Martha flirted with them, sheds new light on a much-examined period of world history.