Informative, but it's mind-numbingly difficult to read, written by an academic for academics.

Part of the debate with "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning, as both use the same data for different conclusions, but has generated a ton of controversy in the field. In that respect it's an interesting read, and pretty much every historian in the field has read it, but its actual historical validity is hotly debated.

I try to be critical in my choice of books about the Holocaust, because there are so many to choose from. I also find it important that I think I can respect the author before I add his or her book on my must read shelf. I ask myself if I would like to have a conversation in person with that author. In this case, I don't think I would. I probably would get irritated by his generalizations.

My view is based on these reviews in particular :

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

But there are many other negative reviews.

I'm giving this 3 stars because it's obvious a great deal of work went into writing it. That said, I think this could have been shortened by quite a few pages. It's repetitious, and not in the way where you read something multiple times and then you always remember it, this is more like the kind of repetitious that causes you to start tuning out and having to read a page over because your brain is numb.