A special kind of author

I read a lot, both paper books and net based literature. The kind of books I particularly like happen to be about historic events or people. The genre I like the least is the detective genre; I simply get bored. When ever I read fiction it tends to be classic authors or science fiction that I read.

A book that has meant a lot to me, in the meaning that it made me think and confirm that I wasn't alone with my thoughts, was the book "Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth" by Gitta Sereny. Sereny spent years working on that book, researching for ages, talking to not only Speer but everyone who had known him that was willing to speak - and surprisingly many were. Her writing was driven by the will to understand, not to paint a picture.

Some have apparently felt discomfort when reading this and her other books, probably because she shows just how similar those so called evil people are to the rest of us, and that you can understand why people make the decisions they make and how an individual is shaped by its family as well as the society around it. There are no evil people and it doesn't serve us to make demons out of these individuals, something which for some is difficult to resist. Vengeful feelings and hate are primal emotions, easy to give way to. It's a lot more difficult to do what Gitta Sereny did, try to understand.

Last Thursday she passed away in Camebridge, 91 years old. If you haven't read anything by her, do it now. The kind of thorough research writing she did is unusual and well worth attention.