In "Hitler's Secret Diary," Haris Vlavianos masterfully reconstructs the period of Hitler's imprisonment (1923-1924) after the failed "Beer Hall Putsch" while simultaneously sketching the personality of the man who would leave his bloody mark on the 20th century. Written in diary form, combining fiction with historical documentation, the book presents an emotionally crippled, intellectually shallow, and egotistical man evolving into an unlikely suitor of power, which he insists on conquering even through his writings, as he writes the first volume of his infamous manifesto Mein Kampf while in prison. Passions, fears, hatreds, obsessions, and complexes weave the fabric of Hitler's morbid ideologies, which a few years later would be realized in the slaughterhouse of the war front and the crematoria. Vlavianos, with the precision of a historian and the insight of a writer, gives us a fascinating book that helps us understand how a demagogue, unleashing a rhetoric of hatred, managed to rise to power and, by captivating millions of people, lead them into the abyss.