It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.

The intermittent depression that had shadowed him throughout his adult life was about to envelop him once again.

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.

Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger.

Digression is my passion. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten, and that are kind of surprising. The problem is, how do you pare stories away so that the book doesn't become a distracting jumble of material, and readers lose focus? In my experience, there's really only one way to do that. I pack it all in with the rough draft, then count on myself and my trusted readers to tell me what's good and what's not good.