Remarkably rich ... As Trentmann captures, the post-1945 transformation has been remarkable ... Usefully reveals the roots of...ethical knots. Trentmann is still hopeful that Germans can untangle them.
Terrifically insightful ... This book runs to 838 pages, but barely a word is wasted. Trentmann is a skilful and unflashy storyteller with flickers of gentle irony.
Absorbing ... The author’s approach is novel ... Trentmann is sympathetic to the demands for a more environmentally conscious society, but he gently skewers some of the myths underpinning them ... Excellent.
Ambitious ... Undertakes an explicitly moral reckoning with the past eighty years of Germany, from the war in Russia to the war in Ukraine ... Offer[s] insight into not just German history, but history more generally, understood as an aggregate of mutually enlightening methodologies ... rentmann’s study marshals an immense amount of evidence in response to a single basic question: how did Germans reassert their sense of themselves as morally oriented human beings.
