germany history

Hardcover. Princeton Architectural Press , 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 144 pages. With photos taken in the mid 1980s the author takes us on a pictorial trip along the former Iron Curtain from the Baltic sea coast at Travemunde (West-East Germany) to the Adriatic sea coast at Trieste (Italy-Yugolsalvia [today Slovenia]); with a separate chapter on the Berlin Wall. They are superb photos full of (sad) atmosphere, poignancy and historical importance.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 362 pages. Hitler, Koonz says, understood the German people's need for a sense of coherence in the wake of what many saw as the degeneracy of the Weimar Republic--and 'he promised to rescue old-fashioned values of honor and dignity' by offering a secular faith to replace lost religious certainties. Koonz explores the promotion of these beliefs in German culture and law, and how they led to the catastrophe of the Holocaust, adding much to our understanding of how a civilized society could reach such infamous levels of violence. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Verso, 1st, 2009, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 561 pages. The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today's EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines. It then moves to more detailed accounts of political and cultural developments in the three principal states of the original Common Market-France, Germany and Italy. A third section explores the interrelated histories of Cyprus and Turkey that pose a leading geopolitical challenge to the Community. The book ends by tracing ideas of European unity from the Enlightenment to the present, and their bearing on the future of the Union. The New Old World offers a critical portrait of a continent now increasingly hailed as a moral and political example to the world at large. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 192 pages. The photos are breathtaking not necessarily for their quality - many are washed out and most of the subject matter is routine day to day military stuff - but for their rarity. While the Germans seem to have been at least as far advanced in the use of color photography as the Americans, there is still a paucity of color photography in the public record. That is being addressed by the various nations who took large amounts of color film in an official capacity, including the US, UK, Germany and Canada.The book's captions are adequate to the task, and there are good historical sections, as well as an introduction by Max Hastings as well as commentary by an actual German war correspondent. The strength of the book is in its ability to bring the participants of the subject campaign - the German invasion of Russia up to and including Stalingrad - to life. The use of a large format allows one to note small details of the photos, and relate to the subject matter on a personal level. Despite the lack of "action" shots, there is much to see in facial expressions, uniform details, and especially geography as the Russian steppe is shown in summer and winter, as well as the famous Russian mud (Rasputitsa) about which so much has been written.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 368 pages. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) was an important and fascinating figure in German philosophy in the early twentieth century, founding the well-known journal Kantstudien. Yet he was overshadowed by the burgeoning movements of phenomenology and analytical philosophy, as well as hostility towards his work because of his defense of Jewish scholars in a Germany controlled by Nazism. However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of 'As If' is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in face of an overwhelmingly complex world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if" a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behavior, we must act "as if" ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 446 pages, b&w illustrations. In this important work of historical restoration, Amos Elon shows how a persecuted clan of cattle dealers and wandering peddlers was transformed into a stunningly successful community of writers, philosophers, scientists, tycoons, and activists. In engaging, brilliantly etched portraits of Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and many others, Elon traces how a small minority came to be perceived as a deadly threat to German national integrity. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 446 pages. As it's usually told, the story of the German Jews starts at the end, with their tragic demise in Hitler's Third Reich. Now, in this important work of historical restoration, Amos Elon takes us back to the beginning, chronicling a period of achievement and integration that at its peak produced a golden age second only to the Renaissance. Elon traces how this minority - never more than one percent of the population - came to be perceived as a deadly threat to national integrity, and he movingly demonstrates that this devastating outcome was uncertain almost until the end. A collective biography, full of depth and compassion,

Softcover. Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 386 pages, b&w illustrations. Between 1933 and 1945 the Nazi regime in Germany tried to restructure a "class" society along racial lines. This book deals with the ideas and institutions that underpinned this mission, and shows how Nazi policy affected various groups of people, both victims and beneficiaries. The book begins with a serious discussion of the origins of Nazi racial ideology, and then demonstrates the way in which this was translated into official policy. It deals with the systematic persecution not only of the Jews, but also with the fate of lesser-known groups such as Sinti and Roma, the mentally handicapped, the "asocial," and homosexuals. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alliance Book Corporation, 14th pr., 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light putty cloth with red lettering on spine, 300 pages. Anti-Nazi book written by ex-Nazi. Translated from German by E.W. Dickes. Front fly leaf with top inch cut out, other wise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 368 pages, b&w illustrations. Neufeld, the curator of World War II history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., provides a well-written, comprehensively researched analysis of Nazi Germany's missile program and its antecedents. The German army became interested in rocket technology during the 1930s at the urging of Karl Becker, an engineer who believed a radical new weapon could deliver a psychological blow to an enemy. The construction of Peenemunde in 1936-37 provided a focal point for research and development that made guided missiles a reality despite Germany's limited material and scientific resources. Neufeld shows that while the rocket program was not Nazi in origin, its leaders readily compromised themselves by accepting National Socialism, especially in agreeing to the widespread use of slave labor. A more ambiguous legacy of Peenemunde is its rocket technology, which decisively shaped the second half of the 20th century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a unclipped dust jacket with fading to spine, 260 pages. This fascinating and unusual book tells the story of an arguably catastrophic German habit - that of valuing cultural achievement above all else and envisioning it as a noble substitute for politics. Lepenies examines how this tendency has affected German history from the late eighteenth century to today. He argues that the German preference for art over politics is essential to understanding the peculiar nature of Nazism, including its aesthetic appeal to many Germans (and others) and the fact that Hitler and many in his circle were failed artists and intellectuals who seem to have practiced their politics as a substitute form of art. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 375 pages. In probing chapters on C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, Wolin discovers an unsettling commonality: during the 1930s, these thinkers leaned to the right and were tainted by a proverbial "fascination with fascism." Frustrated by democracy's shortcomings, they were seduced by fascism's grandiose promises of political regeneration. The dictatorships in Italy and Germany promised redemption from the uncertainties of political liberalism. But, from the beginning, there could be no doubting their brutal methods of racism, violence, and imperial conquest. Postmodernism's origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin's suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance--they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Milwaukee WI, Marquette University, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with a chip to the top front corner, 248 pages. This book explores the crisis of the German Socialist movement and its growth in intensity from the time of the open split of the Social Democratic Party during World War 1 until its climax in the bloody fighting between the radical left and the socialists during the so-called Spartacist Uprising of January 1919. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In The Third Reich, Thomas Childers shows how the young Hitler became passionately political and anti-Semitic as he lived on the margins of society. Fueled by outrage at the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty that ended the Great War, he found his voice and drew a following. As his views developed, Hitler attracted like-minded colleagues who formed the nucleus of the nascent Nazi party. The failed Munich putsch of 1923 and subsequent trial gave Hitler a platform for his views, which he skillfully exploited. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 997 pages, color and b&w illustrations. A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world. When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor's envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals-the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict. By war's end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country's greatest disaster. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. David Irving's The Trail of the Fox is the best work on Rommel ever written. The circumstances around Rommel's involvement with the attempt on Hitler's life, which is the most speculated aspect of Rommel's life, and how the Gestapo came to believe Rommel was involved, have not been made clear in most of the historiography on Rommel. Irving pieces together what really happened most effectively. There are so many strengths of this book, of which the greatest is probably the fact Irving had access to Rommel's dairy and many of his letters, which he got permission from the family to view. Other items he found in collections in the United States, England, and Germany. Since he worked on this in the 1970's he also was able to interview a number of German officers who were still alive that knew and served with Rommel. The whole work is the way historical research should be done; totally reliant on primary source material, and ignores secondary sources that often use conjecture or just repeat incorrect narratives from earlier books. Every source is from people who fought the war; Germans, Italians, British, French and American officers who were in these campaigns and had either first hand observation of Rommel or were major participants like Eisenhower, Churchill, Goebbels, etc. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. 739 pages, index, b&w illustrations. The War That Ended Peace brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, bankers, and the extended, interrelated family of crowned headsacross Europe who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff, Von Moltke the Younger; in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea. Clean copy.

Softcover. Baltimore MD, Gateway Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. 272 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page. 226 men with ties to College Point, New York took part in the Civil War. They served in 82 different Army units, and in the Navy, both on land and on sea. They were infantry men, engineers and artillerists, and one was a musician in the Marine Band. The majority claimed Germany as their country of birth, and 24 died in the service of their adopted homeland. This Gunner at His Piece tells their stories, before, during and after the American Civil War. Clean copy.

Softcover. University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 555 pages. Traces the political fortunes of the Puritans from 1524, the year in which William Tyndale left London for Germany, to the Stuart Settlement at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The author then examines the social, cultural, and intellectual aspects of Puritanism which, he believes, represented a more genuine idealism than any rival religious movement during the Tudor period. Remainder mark to bottom edge, otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. GR, DZA Verlag fur Kultur und Wissenschaft, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 161 pages, no dust jacket, pictorial boards. A collection of essays and photographs on the city of Dresden, ending in it's destruction at the end of WWII. Foreward by Herbert Wagner.

Softcover. New York, Abbeville Press, 1st US, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. Previous owner's sticker on front end paper, light edgewear and soil to wrappers. Clean, tight copy. The pictures assembled here show how this artistic culture originated in the aftermath of the First World War and the unsettled early years of the Weimar Republic, uneasily balanced between revolutionary pretensions and the desire for order. The montage of images--photographs, paintings, drawings, collages, books, and film stills--evokes the period with shocking vividness.

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, pages. In When Buildings Speak,Anthony Alofsin explores the rich yet often overlooked architecture of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states. He shows that several different styles emerged in this milieu during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, he contends that each of these styles communicates to us in a manner resembling language and its particular means of expression. Covering a wide range of buildings--from national theaters to crematoria, apartment buildings to warehouses, and sanatoria to postal savings banks--Alofsin proposes a new way of interpreting this language. He calls on viewers to read buildings in two ways: through their formal elements and through their political, social, and cultural contexts. By looking through Alofsin's eyes, readers can see how myriad nations sought to express their autonomy by tapping into the limitless possibilities of art and architectural styles. And such architecture can still speak very powerfully to us today about the contradictory issues affecting parts of the former Habsburg Empire.

Hardcover. Lawrence KS, University Press of Kansas , 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 386 pages, b&w illustrations. Inept leadership, inefficient campaigning, and enormous losses would seem to spell military disaster. Yet despite these factors, the Soviet Union won its war against Nazi Germany thanks to what Roger Reese calls its military effectiveness: its ability to put troops in the field even after previous forces had been decimated. Reese probes the human dimension of the Red Army in World War II through a close analysis of soldiers' experiences and attitudes concerning mobilization, motivation, and morale. In doing so, he illuminates the Soviets' remarkable ability to recruit and retain soldiers, revealing why so many were willing to fight in the service of a repressive regime--and how that service was crucial to the army's military effectiveness. He examines the various forms of voluntarism and motivations to serve-including the influences of patriotism and Soviet ideology-and shows that many fought simply out of loyalty to the idea of historic Russia and hatred for the invading Germans. He also considers the role of political officers within the ranks, the importance of commanders who could inspire their troops, the bonds of allegiance forged within small units, and persistent fears of Stalin's secret police. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton Caliber, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 324 pages, b&w illustrations. When the P-51 Mustang began tearing across European skies in early 1944, the Allies had been losing the air war for years. Staggering numbers of bomber crews, both British and American, had been shot down and killed thanks to the Luftwaffe's superior fighter force. Not only did the air war appear grim, but any landing of troops in France was impossible while German fighters hunted overhead. But behind the scenes, a team of visionaries had begun to design a bold new type of airplane, one that could outrun and outmaneuver Germany's best. Wings of War is the incredible true story of the P-51 Mustang fighter and the unlikely crew of designers, engineers, test pilots, and army officers who brought it from the drafting table to the skies over World War II. This is hardly a straightforward tale of building an airplane--for years, the team was stymied by corruption within the defense industry and stonewalled by the Army Air Forces, who failed to understand the Mustang's potential. But when squadrons of Mustangs were finally unleashed over Hitler's empire, the Luftwaffe was decimated within months, clearing the skies for D-Day. Clean copy.