One of the most widely-known facts about books in Nazi Germany is that many were publicly burned or banned. The book market underwent tremendous upheaval in 1933, as scores of Germany's best authors and publishers were forced to leave or found themselves unable to work. But although many Nazi authorities issued lists of banned books, the market remained largely in the hands of non-state actors. Christian Adam examines this period of literary Gleichschaltung from a different angle, asking what books were available between 1933 and 1945, and which genres and authors were widely read and popular. Adam also evaluates the success of Nazi leaders’ attempts to create their own literature, asking to what degree this period saw the emergence of literature reflecting Nazi values,which was both popular and critically well-received. Adam's study was originally published in German in 2010 under the title Lesen unter Hitler, and is now available in a lively, very readable English translation.

In order to evaluate which books were widely read, Adam focuses on bestsellers, which he defines as all books that sold more than 100,000 copies during the Nazi period. He identified around 350 books sold in Nazi Germany that met this test. These 350 books represented a very broad sampling of literature, ranging from how-to books and the most varied types of nonfiction, through pulp fiction, high-brow literature, illustrated books, humor, genre fiction, Heimat books, and Nazi propaganda. He divides these bestsellers into ten book categories; the bulk of his book is devoted to a discussion of these ten types of books, along with their authors and readers. Adam is particularly interested in reconstructing how literature from this period can be “viewed from the standpoint of the readers who lived under National Socialist rule” (3). Adam offers a sense of what was available to German readers and popular with them. But how readers saw this literature is much harder to uncover, although the author draws on interviews with people active in the book trade or who were avid readers in Nazi Germany, along with the unique but always fruitful evaluations of bestsellers included in the diary of Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer.

For each category of books, Adam discusses selected bestsellers of the genre. His discussion neatly summarizes each book's content and includes a short analysis of the author's biography and political orientation during the Nazi period and his or her fate after 1945, as well as publisher, sales figures, and reception by the Nazi literary establishment. The cumulative effect of all these individual book and author summaries is almost as if the reader had been given the opportunity to do an extended browse through a bookstore in Nazi Germany, accompanied by an informative bookseller, surveying what was available to the German reading public. We learn that some of the most popular works of the period fell into the category of “factual novels” (71), historical docudramas that focused on raw materials and the life and accomplishments of German scientists and engineers. Karl Aloys Schenzinger's novel Anilin (1937), a “gripping yarn” about the discovery of aniline dye and German chemistry, sold almost one million copies and was “the most successful narrative text in the Third Reich” (71). Other nonfiction novels about raw materials and German technical innovators also sold well, as did a bestseller on naturism (nude sunbathing), advice literature for new mothers, and novels set during World War I that depicted the war experience in thrilling terms. Humorous literature (often regional in focus) could be found among the bestsellers, as were pre-1933 favorites like Karl May's westerns and some science fiction novels. Some successful authors of crime novels worked around Nazi authorities’ distaste for detective fiction set in Britain or the United States by going backwards in time and placing the scene of the crime in the nineteenth century.

Adam offers a detailed overview of the publication histories and distribution of book types that were a high priority for Nazi literary authorities: Heimat novels, particularly those that reflected the values of Blut und Boden; and Nazi propaganda texts like Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925/1927) and Alfred Rosenberg's Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930), which were (respectively) the top and fourth bestselling books of the entire period. Adam notes that “the production numbers alone [of Nazi propaganda books] reveal nothing of how they found their way to consumers, or if they were read,” but instead reflect the ability of Nazi leaders to exploit “their influence and names to successfully disseminate their ‘products’” (95-97).

Adam includes a discussion of the literary production, tastes, and reading habits of an array of Nazi luminaries, including Joseph Goebbels, Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Goering; this chapter seems less integrated into the overall discussion. Adam's study also surveys the array of state and party agencies created by Goebbels, Rosenberg, and others to oversee the book trade. Like many other aspects of the Nazi state, Adam finds that censorship, regulation, and promotion of literature were a polycentric field, featuring competing ministries and organizations. These “internal power struggles” meant that “there never was a unified [Nazi] literary policy . . . the National Socialists’ plan to create their own literature failed on a grand scale . . . apolitical mediocrity above all was ultimately able to prevail” (265), at least in terms of sales.

Adam's findings remind us that books are, among other things, consumer products. Particularly after 1939, Goebbels and other Nazi authorities promoted the publication of “easy reading” and escapist literature, to boost wartime morale. The landscape of bestsellers so comprehensively surveyed by Adam reminds us of Hartmut Berghoff's observation that the cumulative effect of the regime's consumer policies led to both enticement and deprivation of consumers. Nazi authorities oversaw the suppression of consumption in some areas, combined with widespread distribution of key goods such as radios in selected high-profile areas. Readers were deprived of books by many of the most important authors of the period: Heinrich Mann, Arnold Zweig, and Lion Feuchtwanger are only some of the best-known examples. But at the same time, German readers were enticed by “easy reading” and entertainment-oriented literature, including mass print runs of paperbacks and pulp magazines for soldiers, paid for by the Wehrmacht. Adam concludes that, as a result, “almost the entire elite of German writers had been driven into exile or silenced. The actors in the second row now took their place and filled it – rather badly” (266).