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72
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
77/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Katja Hoyer
Publisher:
Basic Books
Date:
September 5, 2023
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. Historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a new vision of this vanished country.
What The Reviewers Say
An exhaustive — and, at times, exhausting — attempt to restore the lost state to the historic significance she feels it has been denied.
Contradictions are beautifully captured.
Enormously refreshing.
Fast-paced, vivid and engaging. Hoyer covers the large political history with economy and confidence.
