For people in this age, this book, published in 1960 (written by William L Shirer) may seem totally out of date, and something that is of a different age. Further, the end of Nazi Germany and World War 2 in Europe happened in 1945 (more than 60 years ago), so why bother. Read this book, and you will know why this book is still relevant today. That’s also the reason why this book, though 47 years old now, is still being published and sold in fairly high volumes.
There are a lot of people nowadays who don’t know what the period of World War II, and Germany before that, were like. My understanding of that stage got clear after reading this book, and once you read such a book, the most common reaction is ‘Never Again’. The book is a fairly big book, over 11oo pages, so may slightly over-whelming initially, but the book is written in a fairly engaging manner, and does not seem like a historical work. It focuses on the personalities involved.
The book is based on the massive amount of captured documents that detailed the work of the Third Reich, details from the Nuremberg trials, and the experience of the author in Germany till 1940. The book details the rise of the Third Reich from the time after the defeat in the first world war, and the efforts by Hitler to build up a platform, the way he starts to build his platform of hate, and attracts a lot of people disillusioned by the current goings on. In addition, there are a number of people who blamed the jewish community, and communism for the current state of Germany and he starts to become their natural leader. There is a lot of detail in these sections, explaining how Hitler managed to plot his way to the leader of Germany and then dispense with democracy.
The growth of the Nazis pushes a set of leaders such as Goering, Goebbels, Rommel, etc who are powerful, and push aside all other power structures that existed till now, a lot of this having to do with setting up agencies such as the Gestapo that enforced a rule of terror. He systematically kept the army on a short leash, making sure that the army was totally subservient to the Nazi structure. In addition, weak European rulers and an insular US provided Hitler the stage to disregard earlier obligations, enhance military abilities and slowly take over other European countries.
Hitler realized that he had to break the Soviet and British regimes so that he would be the unchallenged autocrat. He almost achieved his goals, trying to bombard Britain into submission and attack the Soviet Union when they were not ready. However, he failed to break Britain, and then after the invasion of the Soviet Union was an initial spectacular success, it ground to a halt. Even though the Soviet Union suffered incredible casualties, they managed to halt the feared panzer divisions and then the course of the war changed. The red army managed to push the German army back from the Soviet Union and ultimately conquered Germany along with the western allies. At the peak of its conquest, Germany ruled over almost all of Europe, and was all powerful, including large sections of Africa along with its ally Italy.
Once the Nazi regime was defeated, Hitler committed suicide, rather than be displayed in a cage in Moscow (as Stalin threatened). The remaining leaders were tried in Nuremberg in the first such trial of people for genocide, and a number of them were sentenced to death.
When the German army was being pushed back, the world was witness to an inhuman spectacle. The Nazi’s had come up with a Final Solution to the jewish problem, and the Final Solution involved the use of concentration camps, gas chambers, gory medical experiments and other such inhumanity. In addition to jews, those butchered included others deemed unsuitable by the Nazis – homosexuals, gypsies, communists. The loss of humanity during the Nazi rule included such thing as killing large numbers of people because a Nazi was killed, treating prisoners of war very inhumanely, and treating captured civilians without any humanity.
Read this book, it will give an idea of what humankind can do to each other, and then you will realize why the motto should be ‘Never again’.

This is a classic tome from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For Sherlock Holme’s lovers and for the lovers of detective novels, it is a must-read. Set in the moors of England, you can get a feel for the desolation of the place and for the suspense hanging. It is considered to be one of the best works for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and was released in 1902 in book form.
What is the story about? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in their Baker Street lodgings when they receive a visit from Dr. James Mortimer, who is due to receive the last heir of the Baskerville Mansion, who is returning from abroad. He is very apprehensive about taking Sir Henry Baskerville to Baskerville estate in Broadmoor; when pressed, he reveals that this is due to the circumstances of the death of the last lord of Baskerville Hall, who died in his garden with a sign of acute terror on his face. Examination did not show any apparent physical reason for this death.
There is apparently a family legend about a huge and terrible hound that killed one of the previous owners of the Hall, Sir Hugo Baskerville, a couple of centuries back. Holmes is not exactly a believer of the supersititious, but does not dismiss anything outright. Dr. James Mortimer is more likely to believe it because of the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. In addition, near the body he had found the footmarks of a giant dog.
What begins is a cat and mouse game between Holmes and his unseen adversary. Things start happening before Sir Henry Baskerville even leaves London, with his shoes being stolen. Holmes sends Watson to Baskerville Hall, but refuses to come himself. Watson does his end of the investigation, and finds a few things, such as a convict being loose on the moors, and being related to the house-keeper who sends food to him. Sir Henry becomes acquainted by the brother-sister pair of Stapletons who are naturalists, and starts developing an affection for the sister. All attempts are made to keep him away from the moor, so that even if they do not believe in a giant dog, still no reason to put him in harm’s way.
When things start heating up, Watson pursues a figure in the moor, who turns out to be Sherlock Holmes, who has been living on the moor. He had learnt a lot of things, but in order to get proof, Holmes needs to offer Sir Henry Baskerville as a bait to the hound, and when a sudden mist arrives on the scene, can they prevent the bait from being accepted? It is a suspenseful climax, but well worth the reading.

You would have heard of the notion, ‘Use a thief to catch a thief’; well, this incredible movie takes this notion to a much higher degree. Use the mind of a psychopathic killer to find another one and terminate a series of killings that are happening. The movie, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ was a terrifying thriller when it burst onto audiences in 1991. Rarely has a movie won 5 or more Oscars, and Silence of the Lambs is one of them. Never before has a scary / horror movie won the Best Picture Oscar, this movie won it. It picked up a total of 5 Academy Awards,
- Jonathan Demme won an Academy Award for Best Director.
- Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster both won Oscars for Best Actor and Actress respectively
- The film won additional Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture
In addition, the performance by Anthony Hopkins as the psychopath in the role of a helper playing a mental cat and mouse game with Jodie Foster was so electrifying that he got the Best Actor award for a role that was the shortest Oscar winning role with only 16 minutes of acting through the movie.

Silence of the Lambs was a tremendous financial success, earning more than $270 million worldwide on a budget of $19 million. But arguably the greatest effect it had was on establishing the reputation of Anthony Hopkins as a great actor. His performance was hailed as a spectacular one.
For all the chill and menace portrayed in the movie, the actual scenes of horror and terror were few, with scenes of actual violence few and far between. The menace was in the depiction, and in the scenes of discussion between Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster (4 interviews in all). The discussions between them are one of the highlights between them, with Anthony Hopkins being the expert mind manipulator, and Jodie Foster, the bright but inexperienced FBI rookie.
The movie is about a couple of psychopaths who are cannibals, one of them in jail, and the other outside. There are a number of young woman getting killed and then getting skinned in a gruesome way, and the FBI is desperately trying to find the killer (the more the killings, the more panic there will be in the whole region). The unknown cannibalistic killer has been styled as ‘Buffalo Bill’. The only weapon that the FBI has ? It has another equally horrid killer, the former psychologist turned cannibal and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter in custody (and what a custody ! They have to keep him in a jail with strict security arrangements so that he cannot escape).
The head of the FBI behavioral sciences unit, Crawford manipulates a young rookie, still learning, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to see Dr. Lecter so that he might be more pliant at seeing her and agree to cooperate. And so starts the game. She has been advised to not let Dr. Lecter get too close to her mind, but soon she gives up all those thoughts, lets him peer deep inside her thoughts and mind (and he seems to be amazingly perceptive). Thus we learn the origin of the name of the movie. When she was 10, her father (mother had died earlier) was killed on duty, and she was sent to live with some cold relatives on their ranch. She wakes up one day early, and can hear the sounds of young lambs screaming as they are led to their slaughter, and that sound goes deep into her. She tries to escape from there with one of the lambs, but is caught, and then exiled from the ranch. The sound of lambs screaming remains with her. In the end, when she manages to catch the killer, finally she hears silence, and hence the title.
Things escalate when a Senator’s daughter in kidnapped; Dr. Lecter and Clarice talk and negotiate, although she is setup to fail, once with her boss Crawford letting her promise some terms to Dr. Lecter even though those are not to be carried through. Dr. Lecter lets out information about Buffalo Bill slowly, but eventually provides her correct information that lets her find Buffalo Bill (and what a confrontation, scary ! She is fighting an enemy who has night vision glasses in a house with lights turned off – this has to be seen for the chills to be experienced).
The one scene where Dr. Lecter escapes, and you get an idea of why the security on him was required, is incredible. He swats and kills 2 police officers, and you get an impression of the cannibalistic streak. The chill is when he calls her up later as she is being feted, and mentions that he is having a friend for dinner (the double meaning is very obvious); and then you see him eying the warden of his prison Chilton (who used to treat him badly) !!