

Germania
In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History
Author: Simon Winder
Narrator: James Cameron Stewart
Unabridged: 18 hr 35 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 05/01/2018
Categories: Nonfiction, History, European History
Synopsis
This book is an attempt to answer that question. Why spend time wandering around a country that remains a sort of dead zone for many foreigners, surrounded as it is by a force field of historical, linguistic, climatic, and gastronomic barriers? Winder's book is propelled by a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that, since 1945, so many Germans have worked to rebuild.
Germania is a very funny book on serious topics—how we are misled by history, how we twist history, and how sometimes it is best to know no history at all. It is a book full of curiosities: odd food, castles, mad princes, fairy tales, and horse-mating videos. It is about the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape.