Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity

Rating:
Summary: Cooly courageous, deadly accurate and enriching.
Review: What an astonishing ride. This is the complex, profound story of some of the world's most famous intellectuals thinking their way through the shock of post-war Germany and reunification. Locked in frivolous abstractions, their theories were in every detail dramatic, exquisite failures. Terrified of the people they pretended to care about, with almost no instrumental understanding of real-world economics or culture, they blustered and strutted through a sewer of dirt-stupid intellectual tribalism. Not only has Jan-Werner Muller clarified the seriousness of the events, he has introduced some bright new minds to the English-reading world.