With Peter Ross Range, world-traveled journalist who has covered war, politics and international affairs. A specialist in Germany, his latest book is 1924: The Year That Made Hitler.
And Noah Strycker. Noah Strycker, 29, is living an adventurous life of birds. In 2015, he set a new world big year record by seeing 6,042 bird species in a single calendar year. He is Associate Editor of Birding magazine, former columnist known as “BirdBoy” in WildBird magazine, and frequent contributor to other bird-related publications. He is author of the book The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal about Being Human.
Before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler’s final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany’s historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich.
Everything that would come–the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea–all of it crystallized in one defining year. 1924 was the year that Hitler spent locked away from society, in prison and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It was a year of deep reading and intensive writing, a year of courtroom speeches and a treason trial, a year of slowly walking gravel paths and spouting ideology while working feverishly on the book that became his manifesto: Mein Kampf.
Until now, no one has fully examined this single and pivotal period of Hitler’s life. In 1924, Peter Ross Range richly depicts the stories and scenes of a year vital to understanding the man and the brutality he wrought in a war that changed the world forever.