Berlin Before and After
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"Delightfully original, brilliantly conceived, witty, and poignant.” —Brenda Wineapple
Berlin is more than a city; it's a survivor, an enigma, and a mirror to the world, a unique place whose recent past holds essential lessons for us today.
IIn 1929, Berlin stood at a precipice—alive with art, literature, and radical politics, yet trembling under the weight of economic instability and the shadows of extremism. A century later, the city bears the scars and triumphs of everything that followed: dictatorship, devastation, division, and ultimately reunification. Today’s Berlin is both haunted by and distinct from its past, a metropolis where every street corner and memorial carries the echoes of history, acknowledging and thus atoning for what took place there.
A seasoned chronicler of cities and culture, Wendy Lesser reveals Berlin as a place that refuses to forget, a living reminder of both catastrophe and resilience. In its transformations lie urgent lessons for the rest of the world, and particularly for America today.
A history, travelogue, cultural study, and personal reflection, Berlin Before and After captures the essence of a city that has lived through extremes and offers hope and proof that the past need not dictate the future.
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WENDY LESSER, the founder and editor of The Threepenny Review, is the author of one novel and more than a dozen books of nonfiction. She has written about dance, music, film, television, and literature for The New York Times, The London Review of Books, and numerous other publications, both in the US and abroad. The recipient of fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy in Berlin, she presently divides her time between Berkeley, New York, and Berlin.