Berlin: Imagine a City - Hardcover

Rory MacLean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297868829 ISBN 13: 9780297868828

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014

Synopsis

Imagine Berlin, a city of fragments and ghosts, a metropolis that inspired countless artists and witnessed uncountable murders. Imagine the most arrogant capital of Europe devastated by Allied bombs, then divided by a Wall. Imagine it reunited and reborn as one of the creative centers of the world.Berlin's streets resonate with the echo of lives lived, dreams realized and evils executed with such shocking intensity that they shake its fabric. Berlin tells its volatile history over five centuries through a series of intimate portraits of two dozen key the medieval balladeer whose suffering explains the Nazi’s rise to power, the demonic and charismatic dictators who schemed to dominate Europe, the genius Jewish chemist who invented poison gas for First World War battlefields and then the death camps, and the iconic mythmakers like Christopher Isherwood, Leni Riefenstahl, and David Bowie. Alongside are portrayed some of the countless ordinary Berliners no one has heard of—the Scottish mercenary who fought in the Thirty Years War, the ambitious prostitute who refashioned herself as a baroness, the fearful Communist Party functionary who helped to build the Wall. Berlin is a history book like no other, with an originality that reflects the nature of the city itself.

About this title

About the Author

Rory MacLean has known three Berlins: West Berlin where he made movies with David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich, East Berlin where he researched his first book, STALIN'S NOSE, and now the unified capital where he lives. He is the author of eight previous books and has written and presented over 50 programmes for BBC radio. Born in Canada and resident for many years in Britain, he lives in Berlin. http://www.rorymaclean.com http://blog.goethe.de/meet-the-germans

Review

(a) wonderful book -- THOMAS BRUSSIG FINANCIAL TIMES Berlin vies with London, currently, as the coolest city on the planet. MacLean's wonderfully knowledgable overview of the city's history helps explain the place's enduring fascination. -- WILLIAM BOYD THE GUARDIAN "Berlin: Portrait of a City Through the Centuries" is an extraordinary work of history. To call it history is, in fact, reductive. There's some historical analysis, quite a lot of fiction, some philosophizing, lashings of wit and a fair dose of invective. It's a work of imagination, reflection, reverence, perplexity and criticism that reveals as much about the author's precocious mind as it does about the city he adores. The book's most profound feature, however, is its beautiful writing - phrases of transcendent rhythm force the reader to reverse and read again. Never mind that the logic is occasionally shaky and the facts sometimes slip, the prose is perfect. MacLean calls Berlin "the capital of reinvention." This explains why his biography of the city is not about the place per se, but about those who shaped it or were shaped by it: Berlin as a canvas on which people paint their dreams. -- Gerard De Groot THE WASHINGTON POST, Book of the Year This grandly ambitious work has a noble intention: to re-create through art and imagination the whole historic presence of a great capital, from its beginnings to its present day...Maclean's book is a wonderful achievement, not justly to be summarised in the few hundred words of a review. but hauntingly representing, as in a tangled dream, 600 years of history. -- Jan Morris THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH A brilliant new history of Berlin...What makes MacLean's history of Berlin stand out is that this is an intensely human document, a rich tapestry spanning five centuries and woven together through intimate portraits of 21 if its former inhabitants which collectively reveal the narrative of the city...This is how I love history to be told, through the people who live it...a fascinating book. THE OBSERVER The best history is biography: the story of the people who shaped and destroyed, entertained, beautified and murdered. Rory MacLean imagines Berlin through its inhabitants. THE TIMES Rory MacLean offers an entirely beguiling and original portrait of Berlin. His is a highly unusual history told in a variety of forms by 'vital anonymous players in history's grand drama' alongside some of the major thinkers, dreamers, artists, warmongers and idealists who have shaped this eternally enthralling metropolis...a perfect companion for those about to discover, or attempting to make sense of, their own Berlin. THE INDEPENDENT Rory MacLean's Berlin: Imagine a History is intelligent, entertaining and ambitious...MacLean has written a great book about Berliners. NEW STATESMAN MacLean's original and well-researched vignettes makes up a mosaic and kaleidoscope. MacLean is a highly visual writer, and his dialogue is crisp and believable. Rory MacLean deserves to win all the prizes going. -- Robert Carver THE TABLET [MacLean] writes with the lyricism of Bruce Chatwin and the traveller's eye of Marco Polo. He engages with his readers as if he is talking to an intelligent friend. Read this book if you already know Berlin, or will do one day. THE OLDIE The strength of MacClean's book is that he reveals how Berlin has served all of us as a multi-faceted prism, of time, of history, or artistic enterprise. The author is a non-academic historian wearing his knowledge lightly, sharing his experiences deftly... He is a journalist too, and his style is concise, pithy, anecdotal. The book is more a collage than it is a chronology, and is stronger for it. -- Chris Moss NEW WELSH REVIEW, Winter 2014 I loved it. It is such a beautiful way of understanding history, its stories are so vivaciously told, it is so heartfelt, so intelligent, and so talkative a book. So many of the characters do end up talking to each other, and the author is eavesdropping. It paints the past and the present, portrays Berlin as a portrait of someone you love. It is beautiful. Jay Griffiths Berlin takes the form of 23 portraits of individuals...the text sings. A compelling piece about the industrialist and Weimar foreign minister Walter Rathenau is full of auguries of the nightmares of the 30s and 40s. The Guardian An atmospheric view of Berlin as seen through its people. LONELY PLANET TRAVELLER MAGAZINE This ambitious work hauntingly uncovers 600 years of Berlin's history... MacLean shows how the city. embodies "an essence of perpetual reinvention", propelled by inhabitants from Frederick the Great to Goebbels, Bach to Bowie. Daily Telegraph A wonderful impressionistic portrait of this beguiling city. CHOICE

Edition details

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0297868829
• ISBN 13: 9780297868828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432