Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin

by Alexandra Richie

Book Overview

Berlin - called the Schicksal Stadt Deutschlands, the City of German Destiny - has been at the heart of the most important events of not only Germany, but also modern Europe. In this powerful... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786706813
• ISBN13: 9780786706815
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 1168 Pages
• Weight: 3.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

great overview of euro politics

Ms Ritchie tells the story of Berlin in a truly engaging manner,don't let the length scare you,even if you are a casual lover of history.This is no dry academic treatise.And Ms.Ritchie does a tremendously good job at explaining the origins of Socialism,Communism,and Nazism--and their terrible excesses.If you want a quick,readable grasp of European politics,read this and parts of Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence.

Let the man go, purgatory for Faust

This is a swashbuckling whole shebang account of moden Germany in a Berlin track-mind, long, yet fast, and is a good backdrop to the military history of the World Wars. The good detail piles up and the book gets better towards the second half, and was especially interesting from the inter-war period onward, with short but to the point snapshot accounts of the rise of Hitler after the cultural overdrive of the Twenties. It is good to zoom in for close detail, and then zoom out to keep the pace moving, given such a long range. That the book does. And that detail tells it best, sometimes in chilling fashion. Goethe or Marlowe's Faust. You be the judge.

Readable, useful, challenging history.

When the book arrived in the mail I despaired at the size. When I started reading, I forgot the size.Ms. Richie has done what very few serious authors try to do: produce something of serious intellectual intent while making it readable and absorbing. Her style is "reader friendly" I find.She has looked at the social, economic and artistic history of Berlin from its first days as a village in a way that not only adds to our knowledge of the city, but also enlightens about the area in general. Her comments about German mentality and sense of self are often brutal and incisive. She gets away with this by being fair and involved. Her admiration for the land of her ancestors is obvious but not blind.I could pick few arguments with her in areas where I had some knowledge, although I thought she was a little harsh on Eisenhower.But, overall, I have no complaints. This book is a real addition to the literature about the area and will eventually find its way into college and other serious curricula about the history of Central Europe.Congratulations to the author!

A magnificent book to read and enjoy.

I am so impressed! When I first saw this book I wondered if I should bother with a 1000+ page book on the history of Berlin. 1000 pages later, I realized that about the only thing I did not like about this book was the fact that it was so bulky. Nonetheless, I wish it were twice as long as I enjoyed reading every single page. I had never read a history book that was so all encompassing. This book dealt with everything from the psyche, culture, history and military, to the arts, music, work ethics, literature, and social movements of the people of Berlin. The reader will learn so much about Germany, Prussia, Poland, Russia, the cold war, German literature, film, music, economy, and, ... yet never leave Berlin. I wish Ms. Richie would win a Pulitzer Prize for her great effort and contribution to history. I just loved this book and it is by far one of the best books I have ever read. This is for the history buff and all others interested in a great read.

Biography of a city and a prism on German history

This book, despite its length, was a compelling read, almost a page-turner. Seldom does it lag. The author writes well, and researched the book thoroughly. She has an eye for the ironies of German history--one of the greatest being the Slavic origins of the German capital, one of the many facts of the German past which Hitler suppressed. As a scion of the von Moltke family, she has some special insights to offer, and occasionally throws in a reflection on an ancestor or a bit of her own experience as a former Berlin resident. (It would have been nice to know a bit more of her own history, since she often chimes in with pieces of it.) As a good history should, this one reflects on the future, too--and the transcedent question of the meaning of Berlin as the once and future deutsche Hauptstadt. As a German-American, I have read many books of German history, but this is clearly one of the best. It is full of new insights, and very cleverly uses Berlin itself as a ! prism through which to view German history. It dispels the myth of the "typical Berliner"--given Berlin's relatively short history, most Berliners, even the famous ones, have reasonably short heritages in the city, and many came to Berlin from other parts of Germany or Europe--while presenting a fairly empathetic picture of the terrible times which Berliners have faced--including the post-WWI starvation and hyperflation, the Hitler tyranny, the ruthless Russian conquest, the oppression of the Russian occupation and the hope of the Berlin Airlift, the tragic division caused by the erection of die Schandemauer, and the heroic attempts at escape, culminating in the joy of November 9, 1989, when the wall came down. I can wholeheartedly recommend this work to anyone interested in modern Germany or modern European history.