
Germany
A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000
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Narrated by:
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Paul Woodson
About this listen
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.
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 more than six million people? Or a pacific, 21st-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.
©2020 Helmut Walser Smith (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Since its beginnings, Poland has been a moving target, geographically as well as demographically, and the very definition of who is a Pole has been in flux. In the late medieval and early modern periods, the country grew to be the largest in continental Europe, only to be later wiped off the map for more than a century. Yet even under these constraints, Poles persisted in their desire to wrest from their oppressors a modicum of national dignity and, ultimately, managed to achieve much more than that.
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Easy listen.
- By Pieter Reyneke on 01-11-23
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Saxons, Vikings, and Celts
- The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
- By: Bryan Sykes
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants.
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Thesaurus taxing mind numbing travelog
- By Twang on 01-07-14
By: Bryan Sykes
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Vietnam
- A New History
- By: Christopher Goscha
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 23 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In Vietnam, Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam, but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as they extended their influence southward from the Red River Delta.
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Not bad, but not great.
- By Kp on 08-06-18
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Charlemagne
- By: Johannes Fried, Peter Lewis
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 30 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When the legendary Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne died in 814 he left behind a dominion and a legacy unlike anything seen in Western Europe since the fall of Rome. Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe.
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I really wanted to enjoy this -
- By Doris on 01-19-18
By: Johannes Fried, and others
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November 1918
- The German Revolution
- By: Robert Gerwarth
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.
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Fresh Historical Perspective
- By Greg Fulkerson on 11-04-20
By: Robert Gerwarth
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A History of France
- By: John Julius Norwich
- Narrated by: John Julius Norwich
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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John Julius Norwich - called a "true master of narrative history" by Simon Sebag Montefiore - returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France, a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best. Beginning with Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters - Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antionette, to name a few - as Norwich chronicles France's often violent, always fascinating history.
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Kings and Wars
- By Awake Tex on 08-22-19
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Germany
- A History
- By: Francis Russell
- Narrated by: A. T. Chandler
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Here, from New York Times best-selling historian Francis Russell, is the dramatic story of Germany - from the rise of Charlemagne to the age of Martin Luther, from the 30 Years' War to the iron rule of Otto von Bismarck, and from the formation of the Weimar Republic to the fighting of two world wars.
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good introduction to German history.
- By A. Johnston on 11-02-17
By: Francis Russell
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A Concise History of Russia
- By: Paul Bushkovitch
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Accessible to students, tourists, and general listeners alike, this book provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. Paul Bushkovitch emphasizes the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian history resulting from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, new material has come to light on the history of the Soviet era, providing new conceptions of Russia's pre-revolutionary past.
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Exhaustive history
- By nancy riffle on 05-16-23
By: Paul Bushkovitch
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Weimar Culture
- The Outsider as Insider
- By: Peter Gay
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to power.
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Engaging book, terrible narrator
- By Beth Simone Noveck on 05-08-21
By: Peter Gay
What listeners say about Germany
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- P. J. Summers
- 01-15-24
Stunning book
This book is fantastic. Deeply researched, engagingly written, and extraordinarily moral without taking sides or feeling preachy. Highest possible recommendation.
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- socalconsumer
- 03-26-24
An informative and thoughtful history
The breadth of this history filled in so many gaps in my understanding of Germany— from its disparate parts at the start of the 16th century through to the 2000s. I appreciated the numerous examples used to illustrate many complex concepts & events. The narrative flowed nicely across 5 centuries, and did do smoothly and clearly.
I enjoyed the narration and was able to listen for hours at a time.
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- Joseph Sullivan
- 11-10-21
interesting but unbalanced and somewhat biased
most of the 500 years covered were very balanced and interesting, with considerable information new to me. That said, it would have been helpful to at least touch on the elements of German character and culture over time to help put the concepts of nationhood into perspective.
coverage of the Nazi period quite rightly emphasized the brutality of the Holocaust, German knowledge of it, and the ramifications. I learned much new and quite horrifying. that said, all else in post Weimar Germany got short shrift, including the discussion of German reactions to huge numbers of foreign immigrants.
there is than that to know about Germany, the German state and German people.
the impression is given that the authors discussion of modern n Germany is largely and expression of his disappointment that Germany has transitioned away from nationhood and into a progressive/left multicultural location. His favorable notice of theodor adorno and jurgen habermos of the Marxist new school for social research may be a window into the authors own yearnings.
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2 people found this helpful