Vivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial
history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people
through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that,
while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the
political trajectories of its neighbours.
This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of
the medieval myth of the 'Reich', which was to experience a fateful
renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the
first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex
events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the
decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes,
interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German
people and their own self-perception.
With a second volume that takes the story up to reunification in 1990,
Germany: The Long Road West will be welcomed by scholars, students,
and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of
countries.