In this text, the author draws together his review essays on the political, economic, cultural and social history of Germany through war and reunification. This book provides a study of how historians - mainly German, American, British, and French - have provided a series of differing and often conflicting readings of the German past in recent years. It also presents a reconsideration of German history in the light of the recent decline and fall of the German Democratic Republic, collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.