Customer Reviews

The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity

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This outstanding text has received a great deal of criticism over the past couple of years for not being up to date, but has more to do with the fact that books, unlike our evergrowing knowledge, must be published at some point.
Chapters three and five in this text have no equal that I know of, and few historians understand the historiograpy of Germany as well as Maier.

Don't exclude this book from your reading just because it's not current, and fresh (how many historians are tossing their Collingwood or Croce?), but DO read it for it's remarkable scholarship and insight.

The Unmasterable Past is exceedinly deficient as an historical analysis of the post-war German historical question. Maier's book deals with how historians have viewed Germany after the war, that is, how should German history be viewed in light of the horrors of the holocaust and National Socialism?

This book is an historiographical account of what had so far been said about how both conservative and liberal historians have viewed the complex issue of German history. Sadly, though, the book says absolutely nothing new on its own; that is to say, there are no new thoughs presented. The work is now seriously dated, as well. The text itself is quite poorly presented; the constant peppering of pages with words and phrases in myriad languages is not only confusing, it's just plain annoying.

It is not all bad, however. It is worth mentioning that if you are looking for a well researched account of what was current in the field until 1987 or so, then you've hit a gold mine here. Otherwise, there are more current books out there worth reading.