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Title: The Weimar Republic by Detlev Peukert ISBN: 0-8090-1556-0 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: 01 September, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: scholarly to the point of unreadability
Comment: Unless you are doing graduate-level work on the Weimar era (which I am), stay far away from this book as an intro. It is not for the timid reader. I'm trying to get my hands on the original German edition, but whether it is the writing or the translation, Peukert's book reads as if it were authored by the illegitimate, illiterate love-child of James Joyce and Henry James. Contentwise, it has very little to do with the popular perception of "Weimar Culture;" for that, check out Peter Gay. This book deals primarily with social and economic conditions, and hardly ever mentions politics, and even more rarely, art. If you like charts and graphs and figures though, this is full of them. That said, this is the preeminent book on Weimar Germany. It helps to have a philosophy degree to read it, though. Anthony Heilbut's excellent Exiles in Paradise is more than worth checking out if you're interested in the mass emigration of German artists and intellectuals to the US.
Rating: 5
Summary: Concise, Precise and free of Jargon
Comment: I'm doing some research into the years immediately prior to WW2 and needed a good recap of Weimar for context. This book was superb for the purpose. Not long after starting it I concluded that I might as well save my yellow hi-lighter and simply dip the whole book in florescent yellow ink. There is hardly a page that is not a superbly concise rendering of an important point. Peukert, who died at age 39, was a star of German history of the 20th century, and this book, intended as both a primer and a summary, shows why. Excellent grasp and presentation of both statistics and economics. Few if any hacknied answers to banal questions, but rather a probing for new questions as well as new answers. A willingness to say "I don't know" when that is the proper thing to say. Peukert's intellectual honesty shines through, and all his traits inspire confidence. This book is not, however, a delightful read, being so thoroughly boiled-down to its essence. It contains very little in the way of flowing narrative, witty vignette, or deft portraiture -- mostly it sticks pretty close to what might, with a wink and a nod, be called the "objective facts" of Weimar. It is nonetheless well written, crammed with information, and free of jargon (this last point not to be taken for granted in academic writing of the 70s and 80s) -- and apparently well-translated. A very good job of what it sets out to do. That said, I got very little in the way of the "flavors" of Weimar from it, and now feel the need to read something else for that -- perhaps Doblin's "Berlin Alexanderplatz" will provide that.
Rating: 5
Summary: Crisis made clear
Comment: A masterly translation of a remarkable book! The radical shifts of Peukert's thought are lucidly rendered in an English as limpid as it is urgent.
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Title: Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay ISBN: 0393322394 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation by Ian Kershaw ISBN: 0340760281 Publisher: Edward Arnold Pub. Date: August, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers by Christopher R. Browning ISBN: 052177490X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 13 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany by David Blackbourn, Geoff Elay, Geoffrey Eley, Geof Eley ISBN: 0198730578 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 1985 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945 by William Sheridan Allen ISBN: 0531056333 Publisher: Orchard Books Pub. Date: May, 1984 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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