"This book is a collection of thirty essays by the distinguished historian of Germany, Gordon A. Craig, which appeared originally in The New York Review of Books. They are presented in rough chronological order and are arranged in four parts. The first of these have essays on the political history of Germany from 1770 to 1866, on new Bismarck biographies by British, American and East German historians, on the reign of William II as seen by the novelist Heinrich Mann and the sociologist Max Weber, on Germany and the First World War, on the architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Gottfried Semper, and on Thomas Mann's diaries and new biographies. ". "The second part concentrates upon the Third Reich, its political history, the nature of daily life in the Nazi years, the role of women in the Nazi party, the Leader and his paladins Goebbels and Speer, his foreign policy and the coming of the war, and varieties of resistance to Nazism before and during the war. ". "Part Three has essays on the history of Jews in Germany in the nineteenth century, the story of the Rothschilds, Georg Hermann's much loved novel of Jewish life in Berlin in the 1830's, Jettchen Gebert, and the daily life of Jews in the years of persecution as described in Victor Klemperer's remarkable diary. " "The last part deals with the reemergence of political life after Hitler's fall, the history of the Bonn Republic, and the long road to reunification. "--BOOK JACKET.