Adolf Hitler

John Toland conducted more than 200 interviews with people from Hitler's inner circle — adjutants, secretaries, military officers — before those sources were lost to history, and that access gives this biography an intimacy no later biographer could replicate. At over 1,000 pages it is demanding, but Newsweek and the New York Times both recognized it as one of the most complete accounts of Hitler's life, and the narrative momentum for a book of this scope is remarkable. The fair caveat from historians is that the intense focus on Hitler as an individual can crowd out analysis of the broader social forces that made Nazism possible. One important practical note: despite its catalog placement, this is strictly adult nonfiction — the Holocaust is documented unflinchingly, and this is not appropriate for children.