Germans: The Biography of an Obsession

The classic history of Germany, updated to include the Eastern European counterrevolution, the reunification, and the impact of recent events on Europe and the world

An American journalist who has spent four decades in Germany, Bailey splices autobiography, cultural and political commentary, and reportage in a sprawling narrative laced with highly personal or unsubstantiated judgments. The Germans' love of nature and matter-of-fact approach to sex are "the legacy of their forest-dwelling ancestry," we are told. The author, who married a Jewish Austrian, claims that "it was not the Austrians who took Hitler seriously." He describes the Nuremberg trials as "Kafkaesque" and vengeful, and argues that "Hitler did not invent the fuhrer principle; he merely filled the bill." First published in 1972 and out of print since 1986, this edition has a new closing chapter which includes an interview with Solzhenitsyn and an account of the author's 1990 trip to East Germany, a "sickening shock" exposing him to pollution and grinding poverty. Bailey shines when discussing the Germans' cult of Shakespeare, their penchant for scatological profanity and passion for make-believe and art.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.