A review by hilaritas
Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay

3.0

This is a decent if arbitrary history of Weimar Germany. Gay clearly wrote it as a passion project, and it's littered with interesting observations of the root causes of the political and cultural turmoil that characterized the brief period, along with plenty of hot takes on figures of both enduring popularity (Gay really doesn't like Fritz Lang), and more obscure (he's got Thoughts on how well certain ladies' magazines were edited back in the day). Even driven by Gay's enthusiasms, it's a bit of a slog at times, as long portions of the book consist of lists of the cultural figures prominent in the Weimar milieu; some of these are still well-known, and other names meant little to me. Gay rarely stops to explain who these people are. This is definitely not a book for someone totally unfamiliar with the period. Even his appendix summarizing the political history of Weimar presupposes a great deal of existing knowledge from the reader. If you come to it with some passing familiarity with the subject, there are some gems to be gleaned here.