Modern Germany

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 20th-century historians have imagined. 

Germany is one of the richest and most influential countries in the world, which is amazing when you consider that the nation is only about the size of the US states of Oregon and Washington combined. It’s even more astounding when you consider that at the end of World War II, every major German city (and many minor ones) had been flattened by the Allied bombing campaign. Still more amazing is that the country has gone from international pariah and home of the Holocaust to one of the most well-regarded and humanitarian nations on Earth.

'A true tour de force. A fresh, authoritative, meticulously researched and utterly engaging examination of arguably the deepest thinker of the twentieth century' Jim Al Khalili 'Philip Ball is a terrific writer' Adam Rutherford, Guardian Danish physicist Niels Bohr was one of the greatest...

An unprecedented examination of the ways in which the uninhibited urban sexuality, sexual experimentation, and medical advances of pre-Weimar Berlin created and molded our modern understanding of sexual orientation and gay identity. Known already in the 1850s for the friendly company of its...

Wie wurde aus einer Region voller Fürstentümer, Kriege und Widersprüche jenes Land, das Europa bis heute prägt? Wer Deutschland, seine Brüche, seine Aufstiegsphasen und seine Fähigkeit zur Veränderung verstehen will, findet in diesem Buch weit mehr als nur einen bloßen Überblick. „Die Geschichte Deutschlands" ist eine faktenreiche Zeitreise, die klar, verständlich und fesselnd erklärt, wie aus politischer Zersplitterung, Umbrüchen und Katastrophen ein moderner Staat und schließlich eine Exportmacht entstand.

On 1 August 1714 George I was proclaimed king, bringing Britain and his native Hanover into personal union and founding the dynasty that has ruled Britain ever since. It marked the beginning of a close yet fraught relationship that would shape the destiny of both Britain and Germany, with...