"Drawing on cartography, literature, travel narratives, and the history of politics, warfare, science, religion, and art, Helmut Walser Smith constructs a magisterial account of the German nation as a history of constant transformation and reinvention. Beautifully written and richly textured, it is essential reading for everyone interested in Germany's past, present, and future."
- Sir Christopher Clark, University of Cambridge,
"Helmut Walser Smith's <em>Germany</em> is an encompassing history of German efforts to define their nation in all its stunning contradictions through five centuries — pastoral, productive, exalted, for a time murderous, for longer civic, always complex."
- Charles Maier, Harvard University,