Erik Larson’s books, which include Devil In The White City, and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, take a moment in our American experience and turn that moment into the most riveting and thrilling story imaginable. Each of his books reads like a thriller, set against a grand tableau, where we get to know the players intimately. And sometimes it’s a challenge to remember that Erik Larson’s books are nonfiction– because truth is always so much stranger than anything we could make up.

The Diary of Anne Frank has given insight to three generations around the world, to tens of millions of readers, about what people in hiding go through, the fear and frustration they suffer, the hunger for the outside world, the extent to which virtual prisoners will go to survive. That Anne Frank was just a child when she wrote it contributes to its profound nature; her entries about her adolescent ups and downs and her magnificent optimism make her diary one of the most valuable,…

Berlin, perhaps more than any other city in our collective imagination, has lived through so many identities, and has morphed from one version of itself into another, several times, over the course of just a few generations. Berlin is a city of extremes—and its past 60 years haunts us even as its present delights and absorbs us.

If you are not yet acquainted with Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess (thebloggess.com), check her out immediately, and then sign up to see her at Writers Bloc on April 19.