Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2023) is a new, provocative volume on German memory cultures and politics edited by Jürgen Zimmerer. What can be loosely translated as Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness is a collection of chapters that lay bare a mosaic of a diverse German memory landscape as well as ... Show More
Today
Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno – not least amongst them, his supposed fatalism.
Sebastian Truskolaski argues that Adorno's writings allow us to address what is argua ... Show More
58m 5s
Today
Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest stars, wrote scores of plays, and toured the United States and England, but he neve ... Show More
1h 4m
Yesterday
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Apr 2021
Erik Grimmer-Solem, "Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s, well before Germany acquired a colonial empire or extensive overseas commercial interests. Structured around the figures of five influential economists who shaped the German pol ... Show More
1h 11m
May 2018
Dan Bendarz, “East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany: An Ethnographic View” (Palgrave, 2017)
In his new book, East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany: An Ethnographic View (Palgrave 2017), Dan Bednarz, Assistant Professor at Bristol Community College, examines the impact of German unification on East German intellectuals. Through a series of interviews c ... Show More
1 h
Dec 2023
Nazi Germany: the myth of the innocent bystander
In 1945, after defeat in the Second World War, many Germans claimed to have known nothing about what had happened to their fellow Jewish citizens – and with that, the idea of the ‘innocent bystander’ was born. But just how true was this claim? Delving into a rich archive of perso ... Show More
37m 18s
Dec 2020
Monika Black, "A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post–WWII Germany" (Metropolitan, 2020)
In the aftermath of World War II, a succession of mass supernatural events swept through a war-torn Germany. As millions were afflicted by a host of seemingly incurable maladies (including blindness and paralysis), waves of apocalyptic rumors crashed over the land. A messianic fa ... Show More
58m 21s
Oct 2021
Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube, "Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement" (SUNY Press, 2020)
Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement (SUNY Press, 2020) brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism, highlighting the important role of Theosophy in the general histories of religion, science, ... Show More
1h 3m
Feb 2014
H. Glenn Penny, “Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800” (UNC Press, 2013)
If you have spent a bit of time in Germany or with German friends, you may have noticed the deep interest and affinity many Germans have for American Indians. What are the origins of this striking and enduring fascination? In many ways, it might be said to go back to Tacitus’ Ger ... Show More
50m 38s