While the vignette style makes this easily consumable, and there are a lot of granular details about the rise of Hitler and the regime, some of which I didn’t know, the organizational structure and lack of specificity for events specific to Mildred felt really odd. Some of this must be a problem from extrapolating what is so little known about the events, and so it’s deliberately vague, sticking to fact only. But it can be really jarring at times.

It also means the padding out of the narrative is only semi-pertinent to Mildred herself, when the book implies that it’s just about her. When it’s not. Large sections is just what was up with Germany at the time and then closes out with Mildred wrote home about something innocuous. It skated by because it has been ages since I’ve taken a history class and my memory of Germany at this time is very hazy, so I actually was interested, even if I didn’t sign up for that kind of information disseminated in this way.

What is substantive and new and informative about this book pertaining to just Mildred as a person probably could have been done in a long article or some other shorter form structure with better information design.