Based on 3 Google Books ratings
The Wave
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About This Book
This novel dramatizes an incident that took place in a California school in 1967. A teacher creates an experimental movement in his class to help students understand how people could have followed Hitler. The results are astounding. The highly disciplined group, modeled on the principles of the Hilter Youth, has its own salute, chants, and special ways of acting as a unit and sweeps beyond the class and throughout the school, evolving into a society willing to give up freedom for regimentation a
Our Review
This gripping novel explores how easily ordinary students can be swept up in dangerous ideologies, based on a real classroom experiment from 1967. When a history teacher creates "The Wave" movement to demonstrate how Nazi Germany gained followers, his students quickly embrace the group's strict rules, special salute, and collective identity. What begins as an educational exercise soon spirals beyond the classroom as the movement's appeal of belonging and purpose captivates the entire school, showing how quickly conformity can override critical thinking.
Strasser masterfully builds tension as the experiment escalates from classroom curiosity to school-wide phenomenon, revealing the psychological mechanisms that make authoritarian movements so seductive. The novel's chilling realism comes from its foundation in actual events, making its warning about sacrificing freedom for order feel both historical and urgently contemporary. Teen readers will recognize the social dynamics at play and find themselves questioning how they might respond under similar pressures, making this a thought-provoking read about individual responsibility versus group mentality.
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