Books, of course, should not be judged by their covers. In this case, however, the choice of cover illustration – the historic Reichstag veiled in silver fabric by the Bulgarian–American ‘wrap artist’, Christo – seems unusually significant, and not only because the author devotes his concluding remarks to it (more about that later). German history is a well-ploughed field. With library shelves groaning under the weight of books on the subject, only the narrowest studies, aimed at specialised markets, will offer much that is really new. The only justification for yet another narrative history of modern Germany – and with a title as blandly generic as this one – is therefore that a familiar story will be presented in a new wrapping.
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