Product Description

'Of the "Great Powers" that dominated Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, Prussia is the only one to have vanished … Iron Kingdom is not just good: it is everything a history book ought to be … The nemesis of Prussia has cast such a long shadow that German historians have tiptoed around the subject. Thus it was left to an Englishman to write what is surely the best history of Prussia in any language' Sunday Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33263 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

Daily Telegraph Books of the Year
`A terrific book ... the definitive history of this much-maligned state'

Antonia Fraser, Guardian Books of the Year
`Written with great clarity and vigour ... I was completely hooked'

Financial Times
A magisterial history of Europe's only extinct power, nuanced, dispassionate and utterly gripping'

Customer Reviews

The Rise and Downfall of a Great Book
I've given this work 4 stars with a few reservations.

On the plus side, it is a well-written, expertly researched masterpiece of modern history in a classic style (that is to say, it's honestly intellectual, scientifically rigorous and lacking in patronising gimmickery - hooray).

And the story of Prussia is very well told, in a weave that includes rulers, soldiers, politicians, philosophers, scientists, churchmen, and even the ordinary citizen, in buckets.

It is enormously informative as a result, and left me better educated, which should be the point, but...

Well, it's about those bizarre gaps that have irritated at least one other reviewer.

The first one occurs right at the start, when the author asks how it was that Prussia came to be at all, all things considered. It's a good question, and Mr Clark properly weighs some of the considerations. Then he forgets all about it, and starts his narrative proper with a fait accompli. Bizarre.

There is at least one other example of this in the text, before reaching the 20th Century and the rather odd non-mention of the Great War, although the author has by this time already skimmed over several important military events, like the Franco-Prussian War (believe it or not). It's rather as if the book is running out of steam.

Yet, I can understand that Mr Clark might be trying to concentrate exclusively on Prussian history - perhaps German Imperial history is not so important to him, although Bismark nevertheless IS, while William II is not. Nor is the Weimar Republic, nor Hitler, nor the Federal German Republic, other than in terms of a few reflections and musings.

SO you'll need to take this work as a very particular spotlamp, and have your hands on some other works to fill in the shadows (Massie's Dreadnought, for example).

Prussian History 'Der Grosse'
I begged my wife to buy this for me for Christmas and I was not disappointed.
This spectacular panorama of Prussia is an absolutely fascinating read from the first to the last.
Anyone expecting a militaristic procession form Frederick William through Frederick The Great, Bismarck to Hindenberg et al should be disabused, this is not the focus of the book. It points to the significant positive cultural contributions of the Prussian State (The Chapters on Kant and Mendelssohn are superb) without shrinking from its unfortunate legacy.
If anyone is interested, Christopher Clark can be heard debating with the marvellous Richard J. Evans about Bismarck and his legacy at BBC Radio 4 `In Our Time' listen again section on the web.

This is history as it should be written
It's not very often that you read something which really changes your thinking about a major area of History. This book does. It shows that there is a far greater richness and diversity to the Prussian story than the hoary military stereotypes would have us believe. This book is superb on Prussia in the Napoleonic period, and also on the unification era. Clark is very good also at his pen-portraits - Hegel, the captain of Koepenick, Georg Grosz et al. Above all this is a book which encourages us to see Prussia as distinct from Germany, and is a fine attempt to rehabilitate an entity tarred with a perhaps unjustified degree of opprobrium after 1945.