First Amercan edition. I bought ths while at a Digital Library Federation conference in Charlottesville.

A very exciting account of the Hitler diaries forgery case. The front cover Observer quote "impossible to stop reading" was quite true and I raced through this at an unprecedented pace for non-fiction. The story says a lot (by which I mean not much) about human gullibility and the ability of people to see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe despite contrary evidence. ( )

Decades after World War II ended, the name Hitler still holds a memerising spell over people. Put Hitler and a swastika on the same page and people (especially media people) will throw big money at you. Not only media people but also Nazi memorabilia collectors, historians, former Nazis, attention seekers and plain criminal money grabbers. Therein lies the setting for "Selling Hitler", the true story of how the German magazine "Stern" was duped into paying $9 million for a set of diaries it believed were written by Hitler but were actually written by a forger who then tricked a gullible Stern journalist.

Robert Harris, who is normally known for his fiction books such as "Fatherland" and "Imperium" has done a great job of putting together the drama from start to finish. He starts off with introducing us to the various people who are involved in the whole sordid drama in the various countries (I've actually personally met a few of these people years later!). He then gradually takes us into the scandal, explaining how it all unfolded, exploded, and further developed.

It's compelling stuff right enough and I liked the book a lot. I will say this though. 1) You need to have a big interest in the Third Reich to get through it. 2) Some of the narrative was a bit stodgy and hard to get through so I did a bit of the old page-flipping, especially towards the end. Mr Harris could have used a good editor in the later chapters to trim down the text a bit more. 3) I got the feeling he portrayed David Irving in a bit of a positive light. In my opinion, Irving is nothing more than a right-wing thug dressed up in historian's clothing. But Mr Harris kind of portrayed Irving a bit too kindly in my view.

For true crime fans with an interest in the Third Reich, grab a hold of this book and start reading though! Compelling stuff. ( )