21st century
A01=Joseph Pearson
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Joseph Pearson
automatic-update
berlin
bomb sites
built and rebuilt
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=NHD
comprehensive
COP=United Kingdom
counter-cultural expressions
cultural historian
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
diversity
economic center
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
europe
european cities
expats
german culture
germany
history
immigrants
Language_English
nazis
nightlife
PA=Available
political centers
Price_€10 to €20
provincialism
PS=Active
refugees
second world war
softlaunch
thought-provoking
unique perspective
violence
youth capital
Product details
- ISBN 9781780237190
- Dimensions: 120 x 200mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2017
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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 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 on 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.
Joseph Pearson is a writer and cultural historian at New York University in Berlin. He is the voice of The Needle, one of Berlin’s most popular blogs, and a contributing arts writer for Newsweek in Berlin.
