Germany, like many countries, has witnessed the rise of extremist far-right groups and parties in recent years, and no more so than in the eastern regions. Why have those parts of Germany that used to be part of the old GDR turned out to be so supportive of extremist groups and parties and such fertile ground for violence and hatred?To try to find answers to this question, Ines Geipel, the former East German Olympic athlete, returns to her past in order explore the matrix of fear a...

It was a bold, ambitious and wildly arrogant idea: extending the reach of communism into space. Spurred on by the defeat of Hitler and the competitive rivalry with the United States, the Soviet space programme saw a frenetic surge of scientific activity focused on the objective of demonstrating Communist mastery beyond the confines of the Earth. In order to create the optimally standardized bodies that cosmonauts would require, top secret military laboratories were set up in 1970s East Ger...

The untold story of Hitler’s war on “degenerate” artists and the mentally ill that served as a model for the “Final Solution.”“A penetrating chronicle . . . deftly links art history, psychiatry, and Hitler’s ideology to devastating effect.”—The Wall Street JournalAs a veteran of the First World War, and an expert in art history and medicine, Hans Prinzhorn was uniquely placed to explore the connection between art and madness. The w...

Chinese citizens make themselves at home despite economic transformation, political rupture, and domestic dislocation in the contemporary countryside. By mobilizing labor and kinship to make claims over homes, people, and things, rural residents withstand devaluation and confront dispossession. As a particular configuration of red capitalism and socialist sovereignty takes root, this process challenges the relationship between the politics of place and the location of class in China and be...

**How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more?This internationally acclaimed revelatory history—"filled with first-person accounts from articles and diaries" (The *New York Times)—*of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust.Featuring over 40 eye-opening black-and-white photographs a...

"A triumph of science writing, a well crafted, deeply researched story of politics, ethics, and the fascinating lives of humans and bees." —Jonathan Eig, New York Times–bestselling authorWe think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their productivity. But amid their buzzing, they are also great communicators—and unusual dancers. As Karl von Frisch (1886–1982) discovered during World War II, bees communicate the locati...

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom the author of the international bestseller Beyond the Wall**, a history of interwar Germany told through the town of Weimar, the cultural capital that was both the birthplace of the country’s first full democracy and a launchpad for the Nazis.**“Katja Hoyer is a humane and compassionate writer, and her gripping book is poignant reading in our present circumstances.” —Benjamin...

The notorious concentration camp system was a central pillar of the Third Reich, supporting the Nazi war against political, racial and social outsiders whilst also intimidating the population at large. Established during the first months of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, several million men, women and children of many nationalities had been incarcerated in the camps by the end of the Second World War. At least two million lost their lives.This comprehensive volume offers the first ...

Living as a carpenter who had spent time working in a watch factory, Georg Elser was just an ordinary member of society living in Munich. That is, however, until he took it upon himself to attempt to assassinate the Führer, Adolph Hitler. Being a common man who opposed the Nazi regime, Elser took the skills from his craft and worked to assemble his own bomb detonator. Every night, he snuck out to the Munich Beer Hall, where he worked on assembling the bomb that he planned to use to kill Hi...

"An astonishing story of the anti-Nazi resistance—a story of love, incredible bravery and self-sacrifice . . . brilliantly told." —Antony Beevor, New York Times-bestselling authorHarro Schulze-Boysen already had shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of anti-fascist fighters that stretched across Berlin's bohemian underw...

Tracing the rise of racist and eugenic ideologies, Henry Friedlander#### explores in chilling detail how the Nazi program of secretly exterminating the handicapped and disabled evolved into the systematic destruction of Jews and Gypsies. He describes how the so-called euthanasia of the handicapped provided a practical model for the later mass murder, thereby initiating the Holocaust.The Nazi regime pursued the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped based on a belief in...

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, “an expansive and generous history” of East Germany (New Republic)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 ...