Every two years I teach a Learning Expedition about the Holocaust. In between I like to read another handful of books about the topic (broadened out to include WW2 and other context-building avenues).
I use what I learn to think about revamping both the Expedition and its arts-integrated final product. And now the school year looms so I'm busy churning over changes and refinements
I just finished Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich in Power, and as was the case with its predecessor The Coming of the Third Reich I cannot imagine another more comprehensive and yet engaging history of this place and time period appearing in my lifetime. The level of detail marshalled, the attention to different social strata and regions, the careful coaching of readers through complex contextual matters...it doesn't get better than this. The index alone runs to nearly 150 pages, and is a valuable resource for further teaching materials and research.
In class we'll have to approach Trump's radical faux populism and demagoguery a bit...the kids can decide if he is really a fascist or not.
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