Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History by Simon Winder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first book in a series of three books by the author on the history of Central Europe; I have read them out of sequence, having finished “Danubia” before reading this book. The author is not kidding about the “wayward pursuit” aspect of the book. As I mentioned in my review of “Danubia” the narrative is very anecdotal and tends to jump from place to place geographically, though it does remain in roughly chronological order.

The main topic is Germany, which Mr. Winder covers from the Roman times up to 1933. Most of his personal stories are interesting and work with the narrative very well. This is especially true for the long stretch between the Thirty Years War and Napoleon when there were literally hundreds of small German states. Sure, we might be familiar with Austria, Prussia, Bavaria or Saxony but what about Hesse-Darmstadt and Schaumburg-Lippe?

There is a lot of history in here, and for the most part it’s a good read. There are many parts of the book where I thought the author did an outstanding job in explaining things, for example his discussion of the coming of the First World War is very good. But there are a few places where the personal stories kind of overwhelm the narrative, so I think this book is not quite as good as his next book “Danubia”. But overall I think it is a book that is well worth reading if you are interested in German history.