The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

William Shirer's 1960 comprehensive history of Nazi Germany from its origins through the war and defeat — written by a journalist who covered Berlin throughout the 1930s — still one of the most widely read accounts of the Third Reich.

Provides the most readable comprehensive account of the Third Reich — Shirer's combination of firsthand observation (he was in Berlin throughout the 1930s), access to captured German documents, and journalistic narrative skill created the standard popular history of Nazism for the Cold War generation.