1889-1936 Hubris

Kershaw’s double biography of the Nazi leader (the second part, almost entirely about World War II, is called Hubris) is a classic, and remains the best, most approachable look at the unusual upbringing of a young boy from provincial Austria who once wanted to be an artist, and felt in debt with the Jewish doctor who (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) treated his mother’s cancer. Hubris is most remarkable for the glimpses it provides of a different fate for that young boy Adolf: how he was scarred by family tragedy and by failure at multicultural Vienna, and how the Great… show more.

I enjoy good writing most of all, and if the writing is non-fiction, it’s important to me that the scholarship is sound. Although he never set out to be a biographer, British historian Ian Kershaw found the subject of Adolf Hitler so important—and so large a topic—that he needed two volumes. Hubris and Nemesis achieve a good balance in understanding Hitler’s life, the society that shaped him, and the society that embraced him.