"There is much to like about this book. If this is an old story, it is told in a new way. Germany: A Nation in Its Time is elegantly written and distinguished by sharp insights. Anyone interested in how, during the 20th century, the history of Germany came to be so horrible will be stimulated and entertained, if periodically appalled."— Tim Blanning, Wall Street Journal
"This magisterial study addresses the central question in modern German history: How and why did the country embrace a racial and cultural nationalism that ultimately led to war and genocide? . . . . [A] sweeping history. . . . Smith describes its excesses—from the slaughter on the eastern front to the Holocaust—in moving detail."— Andrew Moravcsik Foreign Affairs
"Drawing on cartography, literature, travel narratives, and the history of politics, warfare, science, religion, and art, Helmut Walser Smith constructs a magisterial account of the German nation as a history of constant transformation and reinvention. Beautifully written and richly textured, it is essential reading for everyone interested in Germany's past, present, and future."— Sir Christopher Clark, University of Cambridge
"Germany went from genocidal madness to a model democracy, dedicated to centrism and even pacifism, in a remarkably short space of historical time. Helmut Walser Smith painstakingly documents how all of this has happened, and why. It is hard to imagine a more analytically distilled version of German history. As Germany now begins a generational change in leadership, this book will serve as a guidepost."— Robert D. Kaplan, author of In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond
"Helmut Walser Smith's Germany is an encompassing history of German efforts to define their nation in all its stunning contradictions through five centuries — pastoral, productive, exalted, for a time murderous, for longer civic, always complex."— Charles Maier, Harvard University
"In these profound meditations on Germany’s history, Helmut Walser Smith explores the changing meaning of the nation from its first emergence in the sixteenth century to its transformation in the contemporary world. Full of new insights and provocative conclusions, Germany: A Nation in Its Time challenges our assumptions about Germany’s past. This is a national history for a post-national age."— James J. Sheehan, Stanford University
"Helmut Walser Smith’s brilliant new book does nothing less than rewrite five centuries of German history.... Germany: A Nation in Its Time is a stunningly successful example of an interpretive and argumentative history."— Mary Lindemann, University of Miami
For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression. Not so, says Helmut Walser Smith, who, in this groundbreaking 500-year history challenges traditional perceptions of Germany's conflicted past, revealing a nation far more thematically complicated than twentieth-century historians have imagined.
Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation's history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation. Smith's aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered over six million people? Or a pacific, twenty-first-century model of tolerant democracy?
Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany's shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party.
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Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation's history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation. Smith's aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered over six million people? Or a pacific, twenty-first-century model of tolerant democracy?
Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany's shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party.
Germany: A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000
For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression. Not so, says Helmut Walser Smith, who, in this groundbreaking 500-year history challenges traditional perceptions of Germany's conflicted past, revealing a nation far more thematically complicated than twentieth-century historians have imagined.
Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation's history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation. Smith's aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered over six million people? Or a pacific, twenty-first-century model of tolerant democracy?
Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany's shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party.
Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation's history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation. Smith's aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered over six million people? Or a pacific, twenty-first-century model of tolerant democracy?
Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany's shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party.
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Germany: A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000
Germany: A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173245267 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 08/03/2021 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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