Germany ─ The Long Road West 1933-1990

Vivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbors.

This second and final volume begins at the collapse of the first German democracy and ends with the joining of East and West Germany in the reunification of 1990. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyzes the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people.

These two volumes are suitable for scholars, students, and anyone wishing to explore the complex, contradictory past of this facinating land.

Heinrich August Winkler was born in 1938 in Ki??nigsberg. He studied history, philosophy, and public law in Ti??bingen, Heidelberg and Mi??nster. He was associate professor at the Freie Universiti??t in Berlin in 1970-72 and then professor of modern history in Freiburg until 1991. He has been at the Humboldt-Universiti??t in Berlin since 1992, and has been a visiting scholar in Princeton, at the Wilson Center in Washington, at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin, and at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich.