David Blackbourn is Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University. His previous publications include Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (1980), The Peculiarities of German History (with Geoff Eley, 1984), Populists and Patricians (1987), and the prize-winning Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (1993).

‘David Blackbourn is one of the brightest of a younger generation of Anglo-American scholars whose work has transformed the historiography of modern Germany over the past two decades.' Times Higher Education Supplement ‘Here is contemporary historical scholarship at its best. Witty, modest about historical generalizations, but ever willing to introduce revisionism, Blackbourn demonstrates how to write thought-provoking and persuasive prose.' German Studies Review ‘It is elegant, thought-provoking, informative and entertaining, summarizing a formidable body of literature and offering new interpretations of it. Everyone, from undergraduates to experts in the field, and beyond the walls of academia to the educated general reader . . . can read [this book] with profit and pleasure.' Central European History

• List of Maps. List of Tables.List of Figures.List of Plates.Preface to the First Edition.Preface to the Second Edition.Acknowledgements.Prologue: Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century.Part I: The Age of Revolutions, 1789–1848:.1 In the Shadow of France.2 Germany in Transition.3 The Revolutions of 1848–9.Part II: The Age of Progress:.4 Economy and Society Transformed.5 From Reaction to Unification.6 Progress and its Discontents.Part III: The Age of Modernity, 1880–1914:.7 ‘Made in Germany': A New Economic Order.8 Society and Culture.9 The Old Politics and the New.Epilogue: Germany at War, 1914–18.Notes.Selected Bibliography of English Language Works.Index.