Excellent niche history which portrays a side of the Third Reich that few ever got to see, or would read about today. The Hanfstaengl family was from that elite strata of old Germany where everyone knew everyone or was related to them - and even over and above those connections, there were also the vagaries of chance: here was a man tutored by governesses whose very first formal teacher was Heinrich Himmler's father! Or that that same man would grow up to graduate from Harvard, of all places, and serenade another young man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a daily basis for a period of time -- and then later meet and become intimate with Adolf Hitler, et al, financing "Mein Kampf" and seeing his sister prevent Hitler from committing suicide after the failed putsch.

Almost more than any other book, this one proves what all histories already showed: the truth -- real life -- is FAR stranger than fiction ... without big consequences!!