Germany: Memories of a Nation
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Germany: Memories of a Nation
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Narrated by:
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Neil MacGregor
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By:
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Neil MacGregor
About this listen
From Neil MacGregor, the author of A History of the World in 100 Objects, this is a view of Germany like no other.
For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Thirty years ago, a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves?
Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany, both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly floated. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the last 500 years, Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following 30 years.
German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses and experiences - examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the 15th-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.
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- By: Peter Millar
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
Based on a lifetime living in and reporting on Germany and Central Europe, award-winning journalist and author Peter Millar tackles the fascinating and complex story of the people at the heart of our continent. Focussing on nine cities (only six of which are in the Germany of today), he takes us on a zigzag ride back through time via the fall of the Berlin Wall through the horrors of two world wars and the patchwork states of the Middle Ages to the splendour of Charlemagne and the fall of Rome.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the best books I have listened to on here
- By Shaun on 05-17-18
By: Peter Millar
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The Florentines
- From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of Western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born - or emerge in an entirely new guise.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator ruins the narrative
- By amavita on 03-24-22
By: Paul Strathern
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Arabs
- A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires
- By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 253
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 253
This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good book bad narration
- By Anonymous User on 09-18-19
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The Craft
- How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
- By: John Dickie
- Narrated by: Simon Slater
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 200
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 166
Founded in London in 1717 as a way of binding men in fellowship, Freemasonry proved so addictive that within two decades it had spread across the globe. Masonic influence became pervasive. Under George Washington, the Craft became a creed for the new American nation. Masonic networks held the British empire together. Under Napoleon, the Craft became a tool of authoritarianism and then a cover for revolutionary conspiracy. Both the Mormon Church and the Sicilian mafia owe their origins to Freemasonry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best book about Freemasonry out there.
- By Isaac Pea on 02-19-21
By: John Dickie
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SPQR
- A History of Ancient Rome
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,867
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,276
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,241
In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Shallow and unsatisfying
- By Joe on 02-19-17
By: Mary Beard
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The Greeks
- A Global History
- By: Roderick Beaton
- Narrated by: Anna Crowe
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek city-states, led by Athens and Sparta, laid the foundation for much of modern science, the arts, politics, and law. But the influence of the Greeks did not end with the rise and fall of this classical civilization. As historian Roderick Beaton illustrates, over three millennia Greek speakers produced a series of civilizations that were rooted in southeastern Europe but again and again ranged widely across the globe.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An Ethnography of the Greeks
- By gmurphy92 on 03-27-22
By: Roderick Beaton
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The Ornament of the World
- How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
- By: Maria Rosa Menocal, Harold Bloom - foreword
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 80
Widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, this history brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where, for more than seven centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and literature, science, and the arts flourished.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Book
- By Zahid Ahmad on 08-14-18
By: Maria Rosa Menocal, and others
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Incarnations
- India in Fifty Lives
- By: Sunil Khilnani
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
For all of India's myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, recapturing the human dimension of how the world's largest democracy came to be. His trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, film stars, and corporate titans - some famous, some unjustly forgotten - bring feeling, wry humor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great listen, the author is biased
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-19
By: Sunil Khilnani
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Germania
- In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History
- By: Simon Winder
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Story4 out of 5 stars 138
Propelled by a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that so many Germans have worked to rebuild, Germania was recorded to enlighten us on serious topics, curiosities, and on the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Very Droll but Almost Entirely Uninformative
- By Timothy Verseput on 03-13-19
By: Simon Winder
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Danubia
- A Personal History of Habsburg Europe
- By: Simon Winder
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 160
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 158
From the end of the Middle Ages to the First World War, Europe was dominated by one family: the Habsburgs. Their unprecedented rule is the focus of Simon Winder's vivid third book, Danubia. This is a narrative that, while erudite and well researched, prefers to be discursive and anecdotal. In his survey of the centuries of often incompetent Habsburg rule which have continued to shape the fate of Central Europe, Winder does not shy away from the horrors, railing against the effects of nationalism, recounting the violence that was often part of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Magnificent history of the Habsburg Empire
- By Skeptical on 10-25-18
By: Simon Winder
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Alaric the Goth
- An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome
- By: Douglas Boin
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 127
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4 out of 5 stars 106
Denied citizenship by the Roman Empire, a soldier named Alaric changed history by unleashing a surprise attack on the capital city of an unjust empire. Stigmatized and relegated to the margins of Roman society, the Goths were violent "barbarians" who destroyed "civilization," at least in the conventional story of Rome's collapse. But a slight shift of perspective brings their history, and ours, shockingly alive.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Can't finish it.
- By Stan K. Smith on 06-21-20
By: Douglas Boin
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The Fall of Rome
- And the End of Civilization
- By: Bryan Ward-Perkins
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the "peaceful" theory of Rome's "transformation" is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans.
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5 out of 5 stars
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best book ever on Fall of Rome
- By james m. on 01-30-22
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Balkan Ghosts
- A Journey Through History
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 296
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 252
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 253
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Anti religious/anti catholic hit piece
- By Daniel Calvert on 05-04-21
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Invention of Sicily
- A Mediterranean History
- By: Jamie Mackay
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, and the Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture. In this fascinating account of the island from the earliest times to the present day, author and journalist Jamie Mackay leads us through this most elusive of places.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful overview of Sicily
- By jay lazier on 01-28-24
By: Jamie Mackay
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes
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History of Europe
- A Captivating Guide to European History, Classical Antiquity, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance and Early Modern Europe
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Richard L. Walton
- Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
If you want to discover the captivating history of Europe, then this audiobook might be what you're looking for. It includes five books that cover topics like ancient history, influence of ancient Greece and Rome, fall of the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, important events, and much more.
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3 out of 5 stars
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fake reviews?
- By Natalie on 09-09-22
What listeners say about Germany: Memories of a Nation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- astasteel
- 07-29-22
A good "listen"
The only thing wrong with this is that it is designed to be a tour of German art and history together. Though vivid descriptive language is used, I found myself needing to Google the artifacts again and again. Yes, I would recommend this audiobook for its historical value, but if one really wants a more complete experience, purchase the book or borrow it from a library. I believe there may be some videos associated with it as well, available through BBC.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- William
- 06-15-24
Engaging and Informative
Having traveled, lived in and studied Germany (history) since high school, I found this to be one of the best 'books' on the country. Perhaps that is because it is performed and not just a reading. But I think also because it covers history of Germany and its culture engaging way that is not structly chronological. Example, a chapter on Beer and Sausage. Great to listen to before - or on - at trip to Germany.
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