Germania In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History

Name: Germania In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History
Price: 4.9 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780312680688

ISBN-10: 0312680686

ISBN-13: 9780312680688

Edition: N/A

Authors: Simon Winder

List price: $24.00

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Description:

Germaniais propelled by a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that, since 1945, so many Germans have worked to rebuild. A very funny book on serious topics---how we are misled by history, how we twist history, and how sometimes it is best to know no history at all. It is a book full of curiosities: odd food, castles, mad princes, fairy tales, and horse-mating videos. It is about the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape, and "a book you will return to time and again" (The Florida Times-Union).

Book details

List price: $24.00
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 3/1/2011
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 480
Size: 5.43" wide x 8.31" long x 0.81" tall
Weight: 1.034
Language: English

Simon Winder is the author of the highly praised The Man Who Saved Britain and the Sunday Times top-ten bestseller Germania. He works in publishing and lives in Wandsworth Town.



Maps


Introduction


'Bound with chains of flowers'


A note on Germany and German





From the land of gloomy forests


Roman Germans


An alligator far from home


I'll have some green sauce with that


The medieval car park





Ancient palaces


Charles the Great


Pious, Bald or Fat


A very small town


Spreading the Word


In search of a bit of sunshine


Thrust to the east





Walled towns


Other superiority complexes


A brief note on political structures


German tribes


Famine and plague


Where a million diamonds shine





The tideless sea


The curse of Burgundy


Happy families


Rampant folk costume


Imperial circles


Habsburgs





Spires, turrets and towers


A birthplace and a death-house


The devil's bagpipes


The ruler of the world


The New Jerusalem


An unhappy wine merchant





The Golden City of the Faithful


The land where lemon blossom grows


Black armour


The King of Sweden's horse


A Surprise visit from an asteroid





Hourglasses and bird-eating spiders


'Music to Escort the Dead from this Life'


In the time of powdered wigs


Damascened yataghans


'Burn the Palatinate!'


Catholicism goes for broke





The descendants of Cyrus the Great


Drinking chocolate with ostriches


More competitive tomb-building


Chromatic fantasia and fugue


The Strong and the Fat





Little Sophie Zerbst


Parks and follies


In the footsteps of Goethe


A glass pyramid filled with robin eggs


A surprise appearance by a sea cow


German victimhood


Good-value chicken





Marches militaires


Karl and Albrecht


Girls in turrets


Heroic acorns


Victory columns





The grandeur and misery of nationalism


Snow-shake particularism


A surprise trip to Mexico





Lambs and ladybirds


Jigsaw country


Hunting masters


Ruritania, Syldavia and their friends


An absence





Beside the seaside


Texan Wends


Pidgin German


Thomas and Ernie


Podsnap in Berlin


Varieties of militarism





Failure


The British-German divorce


Disaster


Defeat and revolution


Remembering the dead


Some royal aftershocks





An unattractive lake


Putsches and suspenders


'5, 4, 3, 2, 1…'


The death of science


Terminal throes


Ending


Conclusion


In the hills


Mendel's statue


Death by oompah


Bibliography


Illustrations


Acknowledgements


Index