"Hitler's Private Library, The Books That Shaped His Life" by Timothy Ryback

I am a sucker for anything "library". I detest war and anything involving it, or its historical glorification. So puzzle me this. A book of Hitler and his library. Do I buy it, and let it rest in a pile of other unread volumes? Do I not buy it and save my resources for another day of bibliophile fishing? Or do I do the former and actually read it? With some trepidations I do the last.
Ryback has to bring history into the library setting. This is Hitler's library, albeit what remains of it after it was dismantled, dispersed, and in some cases destroyed. Ryback is thorough, however, recreating the missing volumes, or at least some of them by searching relevant documents across the globe of what remains of Hitler's correspondence, as a private citizen, and the leader of the Nazi party and military machine; the man we've come to love to hate was also a bibliophile. Now long gone is the passive, retired pop image of a book person.
Witnessed by few, the self-proclaimed literary consumer searched through the classics for a self determination of what he professed. Emerging out of the First World War, the solitary Hitler soldier could do no other but read, for the alternative his personality could not digest.
I have to stop there...for it is difficult to walk the rope that the author of Hitler's Library did. The author's question is; this is not a glorification of the man, or either of the works in his library. But if we judge people by their library, what literary fuels they require to sustain themselves, we are ultimately left with questions of how and why; of some of the severest acts of human conduct and ...evil every enacted on the human soul. Is there one book that changed Hitler? Ryback answers no. Racism and self-aggrandizement was Hitler and the times and place that he was in. Yes, "I regard [Henry] Ford as my inspiration (p. 71), he once espoused, the automobile Ford being among other things anti-Semitic, but there were many, many others including Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. In addition...his Catholic upbringing also added to his soup of political, racial angst, though this would morph into his own personal cherry-picked religious creation - a "creative force".
Unlike most books I read, I thoroughly pencil underlines for significant thoughts, fill margins with quips and suggestions...but not this one. Hitler's Library allowed me to learn about German philosophy and thinking during the early 20th century, some of the German political events leading up to and during the Second World War and of a person I only visualized as a card board cut-out of evil. Ultimately, I learned that anything can be used as a weapon...even a book.