An anthology of travel writing about Nazi Germany doesn't sound very promising, but the well-chosen extracts in this collection are both powerful and poignant. Beginning in 1933, when Hitler had just become chancellor, this book reveals how Nazi Germany was seen through foreign eyes: by students, such as Shi Min from China; by those on academic scholarships, such as Jean-Paul Sartre; or by people there to learn the language, like Samuel Beckett. The 24-year-old Martha Dodd, daughter of the American ambassador, met Hitler in 1933. Later she recalled his "hypnotic" eyes: "Only in the mad burning eyes could one see the terrible future of Germany." Virginia Woolf, who drove across Germany en route for Italy in 1935, was appalled by the antisemitic propaganda and the "stupid mass feeling". In 1937, after four months there, Beckett noted in his diary: "Soon I shall really begin to puke. Or go home." By the end of the war, the devastation of Berlin was witnessed by Norwegian journalist Theo Findahl: the city was reduced to "ruins, burned buildings, death, and destruction".