HITLERS LIBRARY THE BOOKS THAT SHAPED HIS LIFE – TIMOTHY W. RYBACK

He was, of course, a man better known for burning books than collecting them and yet by the time he died, aged 56, Adolf Hitler owned an estimated 16,000 volumes – the works of historians, philosophers, poets, playwrights and novelists. For the first time, Timothy W. Ryback offers a systematic examination of this remarkable collection. The volumes in Hitler s library are fascinating in themselves but it is the marginalia – the comments, the exclamation marks, the questions and underlinings – even the dirty thumbprints on the pages of a book he read in the trenches of the First World War – which are so revealing. Hitler s Private Library provides us with a remarkable view of Hitler s evolution – and unparalleled insights into his emotional and intellectual world. Utterly compelling, it is also a landmark in our understanding of the Third Reich.