In the Garden of Beasts: Tom Hanks may go back to WWII

Word has it that Universal and Tom Hanks production company, Playtone have optioned the movie rights to Erik Larson’s nonfiction best-seller In the Garden of Beasts; Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. The book gets its name incidentally from the Tiergarten, the central park where the Dodd family had their home. The literal translation is Garden of the Beasts. According to the Hollywood Reporter Hanks is eyeing the project as a potential starring vehicle for himself. That casting would make much more sense to me than Tom Hank's playing the father in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close but that's another story!
Here's how Larson himself describes his work:

The saga of an American father and daughter who in July 1933 suddenly found themselves, and the rest of their family, transported to the heart of Hitler's Berlin. The father was William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered history professor from Chicago (Tom Hanks is perfect for this, yes?)who, much to his surprise and everyone else's, was chosen by Roosevelt to be America's first ambassador to Nazi Germany; Dodd's daughter, Martha, was 24 years old and came along for the adventure, and to escape a dead marriage. At first this new world seemed full of energy and goodwill, nothing like what newspapers back home had portrayed. But slowly a pall of intrigue and terror fell over the family--until the cataclysmic weekend that changed them all forever.

Read more from Larsen at his website eriklarsonbooks.com

The real Dodd family in 1933

Some of the juicier tidbits from thr.com:

Martha was a vivacious socialite who had romantic affairs with a Gestapo official and a Soviet spy. Dodd and his family at first naively navigated life in Nazi Germany (Dodd’s daughter was excited when Hitler kissed her hand) but they slowly gained awareness of the mounting brutality around them.

Larson’s excellent The Devil and the White City is already development with Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way company.

In the Garden of Beasts would return Hank's to World War II, a time period of interest to the history buff.. His Playtone was behind the Emmy-winning miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

The book was published this past May; if any of you have read it already, I'd love to hear your take on its cinematic potential.