The Zookeeper's Wife

I listened to this as I drove back from NJ and was delighted with the escapades of the varied inhabitants of the Warsaw Zoo. Jan and Antonina so bravely live and help others in war torn Warsaw that I was truly inspired. How do people summon the courage and energy to so consistently fight back against wrongdoing? With their zoo in tatters from bombing, and their quarters a veritable revolving door for refugees from the ghetto and the undergroun...read more

This book isn't really about the zookeeper's wife. Rather, Ackerman uses the story of Antonina Zabinski as a backdrop to tell the larger story of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and the Polish Resistance. As a story-telling technique, I have no problem with this, and Ackerman does it fairly well. We learn a lot about Warsaw during the war, as well as learning about such things as the zookeeping trade and animal life. The biggest drawback to Ackerma...read more