A Concise History of Germany

More like an abridged history of Germany. I expect a concise history to be complete, just using as few words as possible. It could also be called a short history of modern Germany because coverage of the pre-modern era is weak. The chapters get progressively longer, and time periods shorter; far more drastic than the disclaimer in the preface led me to believe. It glosses over many details, some of which are important. On the other hand, chapters on the 20th century are an alphabet soup of acronyms for every little political party, which can be difficult to keep straight. Although much of the content is even-handed, the author's leftist bias is evident in many places. When she writes about politics and economics, she often makes show more judgments that assume her readers share her underlying biases. I don't, and found that a bit annoying. Finally, rather than being concise, the prose is rather dense. Finishing the book was a chore. show less

Concise as in top level 1500 feet, just enough overview history to get you interested in learning more.
Learn the big picture before drilling in on the detailed parts of history that you want to learn more about.

It's certainly concise. I picked this one up after a trip to Germany where I realized I was seeing several historical monuments that referenced events that I had literally zero context for. While I wouldn't say I'm an expert after reading this, I at least better understand why there are so many random castles.

This is a good, short introduction to the history of Germany from the Medieval period through the contemporary period. As such, it is not for specialists since each period is not covered in great detail but it does provide enough background to responsibly survey each period and it does offer additional resources.

Just as the title says, this book presents a very short generalized history of Germany. Things are most confusing from the middle ages up through the 1800s, though this is because of the sheer fluctuation of the country, the lack of clear centralized government, and the constant changes going on, rather than a judgment on the author's capabilities. I also appreciated that Fulbrook attempted to stay neutral as possible, pointing out how easy it is to oversimplifications and stating various viewpoints on the matter as much as possible.

Pretty good. Very concise, but that is to be expected. A few glaring factual errors loses one star.

A good short history. Comes down hard on WWII Germans. Insists they knew about the "final solution".Some excellent photographs