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doruga 's review for:
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947
by Christopher Clark
Great resource for the rise and fall of Prussia, starting with the Great Elector and ending with the German republic. The book spans a really huge time range, and it tries to mantain a certain level of detail. However, what this means is that the book is gigantic and still feels like it has to rush through decades of time with just one sentence. As reference, the Richard Evans trilogy of the third reich spans only about 20 years and its three huge books long. So yeah, this book tries a really big undertaking to cover in just one text. In either case, I do think it succeeds in its goals considering the difficulty of the project.
I did miss a more people's perspective of history with this one. It's mentioned for sure but this history is mostly framed from the perspective of government and war. This is fine, but I think it could have benefited from looking at life for poor, peasent life and how that affected politics. There has been such a rich history of people's politics in Prussia (fucking marx and engels were prussian and the republic was mostly socialist), so it clearly was important.
Anyways, I did really like it. Great resource for history nerds interested in the formation of Germany and the historical context that predated the nazi regime. This book added with Richard Evan's trilogy on the third reich is a great source for modern prussian and german history, and they complement each other quite well.
For now, though, I need a book thats less dense lol.
I did miss a more people's perspective of history with this one. It's mentioned for sure but this history is mostly framed from the perspective of government and war. This is fine, but I think it could have benefited from looking at life for poor, peasent life and how that affected politics. There has been such a rich history of people's politics in Prussia (fucking marx and engels were prussian and the republic was mostly socialist), so it clearly was important.
Anyways, I did really like it. Great resource for history nerds interested in the formation of Germany and the historical context that predated the nazi regime. This book added with Richard Evan's trilogy on the third reich is a great source for modern prussian and german history, and they complement each other quite well.
For now, though, I need a book thats less dense lol.