Product Description

This history offers a powerful and original account of Germany from the eve of the French Revolution to the end of World War One.

This book is not available from Blackwell in the United States and the Philippines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #206752 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Review
‘David Blackbourn is one of the brightest of a younger generation of Anglo–American scholars whose work has transformed the historiography of modern Germany over the past two decades.′ Times Higher Education Supplement

‘Here is contemporary historical scholarship at its best. Witty, modest about historical generalizations, but ever willing to introduce revisionism, Blackbourn demonstrates how to write thought–provoking and persuasive prose.′ German Studies Review

‘It is elegant, thought–provoking, informative and entertaining, summarizing a formidable body of literature and offering new interpretations of it. Everyone, from undergraduates to experts in the field, and beyond the walls of academia to the educated general reader . . . can read [this book] with profit and pleasure.′ Central European History

German Studies Review
Here is contemporary historical scholarship at its best.

Central European History
It is elegant, thought-provoking, informative and entertaining, summarizing a formidable body of literature and offering new interpretations of it.

Customer Reviews

The news that really mattered for a change
A tremendously competent piece of research, which portrays and measures wave after wave of social change. For example Blackbourn shows the rise of women in public service vocations, which quickly surpassed the numbers of clergymen or members of religious orders. By the 1880s and 90s their efforts generated whole new industries in previously unvalued "welfare" work -- mother and child welfare, campaigns to eradicate tuberculosis and venereal disease, to raise awareness about nutrition or implement standards for sanitation and housing. In Germany, Fürsorge (welfare) became a catchword for a hundred newly popular initiatives to "improve" people's lives and relations.

Blackbourn captures the kinds of news that mattered more than the same old political and military contests.