David Clay Large

In the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent-though often disastrous-role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity's aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large's definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall.

Berlin

A Modern History

the Olympics of 1936

Nazi games

The Story of One Family Abandoned to the Holocaust

And the World Closed Its Doors

Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich (Publications of the German Historical Institute)

Contending with Hitler

A narrative following the rise of Nazism in Munich begins forty years before Hitler's rise, when the city was in the midst of its golden age and known for its culture and modern spirit

Munich's Road to the Third Reich

Where Ghosts Walked

Recaptures the chaos in Europe prior to World War II, showing a Europe in political and social upheaval, ripe for a fascist takeover

Europe's Path in the 1930s

Between Two Fires

"Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling book offers the first comprehensive narrative history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the hostage taking by Palestinian terrorists of Jewish athletes and their tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by German police. Drawing on a wealth of contemporaneous sources, including recently opened files in the German and Olympic archives, eminent historian David Clay Large offers a comprehensive exploration of the 1972 festival. He interweaves the political drama surrounding the Games with the athletic spectacle in the arena of play, itself hardly free of political controversy. Writing with flair and an eye for telling detail, Large brings to life the stories of the indelible characters who epitomized the Games, ranging from the city itself to the visionaries who brought the Games to Munich against all odds to the athletes, obscure and famous alike. With the Olympic movement in constant danger of terrorist disruption, and with the fortieth anniversary of the 1972 tragedy upon us in 2012, the Munich story is more timely than ever"--

Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games

Munich 1972

Felix Gilbert

1890 to the Present

The End of the European Era

Biographie einer Stadt

The Grand Spas of Central Europe leads readers on an irresistible tour through the grand spa towns of Central Europe—fabled places like Baden-Baden, Bad Ems, Bad Gastein, Karlsbad, and Marienbad. Noted historian David Clay Large follows the grand spa story from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present, focusing especially on the years between the French Revolution and World War II, a period in which the major Central European Kurorte (“cure-towns”) reached their peak of influence and then slipped into decline. Written with verve and affection, the book explores the grand spa towns, which in their prime were an equivalent of today’s major medical centers, rehab retreats, golf resorts, conference complexes, fashion shows, music festivals, and sexual hideaways—all rolled into one. Conventional medicine being quite primitive through most of this era, people went to the spas in hopes of curing everything from cancer to gout. But often as not “curists” also went to play, to be entertained, and to socialize. In their heyday the grand spas were hotbeds of cultural creativity, true meccas of the arts. High-level politics was another grand spa specialty, with statesmen descending on the Kurorte to negotiate treaties, craft alliances, and plan wars. This military scheming was just one aspect of a darker side to the grand spa story, one rife with nationalistic rivalries, ethnic hatred, and racial prejudice. The grand spas, it turns out, were microcosms of changing sociopolitical realities—not at all the “timeless” oases of harmony they often claimed to be. The Grand Spas of Central Europe holds up a gilt-framed but clear-eyed mirror to the ever-changing face of European society—dimples, warts, and all.

A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing

The Grand Spas of Central Europe

David Clay Large

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