The Spinoza Problem: A Novel - Irvin D. Yalom

I can see why the author felt the need to add the rather defensive subtitle "a novel": this book exists mainly to present history / philosophy in a readable way, so it has an unusual structure and there are a lot of rather artificial conversations where people explain their theories and beliefs to each other, but if you don't mind that then it's a fascinating read.  It contains two intertwined stories, one following the 17th century philosopher Spinoza as he is excommunicated by the Jewish community in Amsterdam for his radical ideas, and another imagining the inner life of Alfred Rosenberg, an anti-semitic writer who influenced Hitler in the early days of the Nazi party, as he struggles with his ambivalent feelings towards Spinoza, hating his Jewish origins but admiring his powerful writings against religious authority.  The strand about Rosenberg is largely fictional, based on one genuine incident where the Nazis seized a collection of books from a Spinoza museum, noting in their report that they were "of great importance for the exploration of the Spinoza problem". Although this description sounds rather dry, I was utterly captivated by this book, even at one point having a nightmare after reading a passage describing Hitler's early "impassioned" speeches and the wild applause he got from the audience. (A nightmare that then became even more frightening when I woke up to hear news of Donald Trump's latest victory...)  My only real complaint is that the last paragraph in the book's Epilogue states that the bodies of the war criminals executed after the Nuremberg trials were incinerated at Dachau - this ghoulish idea made such an impression on me that I immediately looked it up, trying to work out why it happened, but the most reliable-looking accounts that I found stated that they were in fact burned in a Munich crematorium.