The Germans [Paperback]

Norbert Elias (Author), Michael Schröter (Editor), Eric Dunning (Translator), Stephen Mennell (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0231105630 | ISBN-13: 978-0231105637 0

The last major work by one of our century's most influential social theorists, The Germans is a penetrating account of German social development, from the seventeenth century to the present. Enhanced by his deep understanding of other Western European nations, Norbert Elias's incisive analyses of nationalism, violence, and the breakdown of civilization will be an indispensable resource for those interested in modern European history and sociology and in European studies.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Noted German sociologist Elias (The Civilizing Process, Blackwell, 1994) presents here a series of lectures and essays focusing on German social development since the Enlightenment. He emphasizes the ways in which the features of German life that combined to produce Adolf Hitler and National Socialism grew out of German history. Elias argues that the Second Empire was organized around a code of honor based on dueling or its possibility. This point is overstated; he makes a more convincing case for the flourishing in Weimar of a climate of brutal violence that denied the legitimacy of a parliamentary republic and challenged the effective monopoly of deadly force necessary to the state's functioning. Traces of this "habitus," according to Elias, still remain part of the German mentality?a sobering concept, particularly in light of Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioner's (LJ 3/15/96). For academic collections.?Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Elias's magnum opus . . . Having read it, no one will say again that the awkward gap between the 'bird's eye view' and the insider's experience of society cannot be bridged, that the tortured ways of history cannot be both explained and understood. -- Zygmunt Bauman author of Modernity and the Holocaust

This insightful work . . . has much to say about Germany. But it also has much to point out about other nations, especially the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe, which have a lot to learn about nation-building. -- Christian Science Monitor

This study is particularly brilliant, even for the great Elias. In it he returns to the shame analysis that he began in The Civilizing Process, clarifying great swaths of German and European cultural history. A must for your reading list. -- Thomas J. Scheff University of California, Santa Barbara

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 380 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231105630
• ISBN-13: 978-0231105637
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,004,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A historic masterpiece, October 21, 2010

By 

Rudolf Stiegelmeyr - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Germans (Paperback)

Norbert Elias provides third and fourth postwar generations with a masterful insight into not only how nationalism together with authoritarian thinking work but how and why their particular German version could develop in the first place. Without knowing and understanding this, understanding the mechanisms of the Third Reich and - even more important - why their roots are still there is simply not possible. Learning from history with regard to these underlying sub-cultures from which Nazi ideologies drew their powerful and deadly potential and on the other hand their misinterpretation by the rest of the world means reading Elias' "The Germans". He clearly shows: the roots for Nazidom and Naziism lie much deeper than Word Depression's unemployment, the Spirits of Verdun or Hitler's brilliant demagoguism.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic one, September 22, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Germans (Hardcover)

Norbert Elias gives us with this fantastic piece of work the BEST interpretation on the question of nacionalism(s). His text is so clear and yet so full of ideas that it keeps you reading until the very end.And it is not a very "friendly" theme. This one is for anybody who ever asked how and why nacionalism works as a powerful bond and wonders about the development of ideas in Germany until World War II. Definetly, a masterpiece