I want to make clear that I'm not a common history reader but I'm interested on improving my knowledge on the topic and I want to stop getting the "facts" out of movies.
I started reading William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" but then I found out here that it's widely criticized and people say it's outdated. They recommend reading Richard Evans' The Third Reich Trilogy.
What's your opinion? What should I read? Take into account I'm not a history student (easy to follow preferred), thanks.
Although it's three books, Richard J. Evans's trilogy (The Coming of the Third Reich,The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War) are accessible narrative histories by a highly reputable scholar in the field of German history. Much of the popular understanding of the Third Reich stems from its wartime activities and occupation policies, and Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe matches Evans for both excellent prose and an expansive context. If you are not too intimidated by academic history, Ian Kershaw's The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich tackles the issue of Hitler's popularity and how it evolved over time. Similarly, Peter Fritzsche's Life and Death in the Third Reich is a social history of the Nazi Germany that examines how ordinary Germans acclimated themselves to the Third Reich's new order with varying degrees of success.
I would recommend taking a slightly different tact and read it through the eyes of a citizen. Sebastian Haffner wrote a great book called Defying Hitler - which gave me an insight into the Third Reich that I didn't pick up from Shirer or Fest.
Related question, are there any particularly good documentaries out there to watch? I've found a lot about WW2 itself, and military history, but none seem to focus on social matters in Germany between the wars.