Berlin / Joseph Pearson.

Author
Pearson, Joseph (Historian) [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • London : Reaktion Books, 2017.
  • ©2017
Description
255 pages : illustrations (some color), map ; 20 cm.

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks DD860 .P35 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Library of Congress genre(s)
    Getty AAT genre
    Series
    Cityscopes [More in this series]
    Summary note
    "Berlin is a party in a graveyard. It is Europe's youth capital, and its guilty war conscience. It is a disputed construction site, built on the ruins of regimes. Today's diversity -- refugees, immigrants, arty expats, East and West -- emerges from a history of violence. Berlin is as cutting-edge and contemporary as it is wary of its extreme past. Berlin [the book] is a comprehensive short history and portrait of the German capital today. The story of Berlin's vagaries over nine centuries -- from a dry place in a bog to the control centre of modern Europe -- is expertly portrayed by historian Joseph Pearson. The dynamic present is a palimpsest of this unsettling past. A long-time flâneur of Berlin's streets, Pearson explores how the city's history is visible today in bombsites, museums and industrial club spaces (and a lake hosting a man-nibbling monster). In this book, we find that elements of the city that for some can be unnerving -- its emptiness, its provincialism, its ramshackle industrial eclecticism, its sexual freedoms, its confrontation with a murderous past -- are precisely what give the city its charge. Pearson poses provocative questions as he reveals the city's many layers and varied neighbourhoods. He argues, ultimately, that Berlin's centrality in European and cultural affairs is only just beginning to be felt"--Page 2 [flap] of cover.
    Notes
    City map on back cover flap.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-241), filmography (pages 241-242) and index.
    Contents
    • Before Prussia (until 1701)
    • The kingdom of soldiers and philosophers (1701-1871)
    • New world capital (1871-1918)
    • Desperation and decadence (1918-1933)
    • Nazi Berlin (1933-1939)
    • City of murder (1939-1945)
    • Division, and West Berlin (1945-1989)
    • East Berlin (1945-1989)
    • The turning point (1989-1991)
    • The Berlin renaissance (1991-present)
    • The spacious city
    • Memory and nature
    • The resurrection of the dead
    • War damage
    • The Berlin diaspora
    • Underground
    • Sexuality city
    • I heart Kotti
    • Berlin 'cool'.
    ISBN
    • 9781780237190 ((paperback))
    • 1780237197 ((paperback))
    OCLC
    952368765
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