有没有介绍德国历史的好书?
之前偶然开始读 Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 ( http://amzn.com/0674031962 ),感觉非常好,就买了纸版。这是一本以普鲁士为纲而写的德国史书,作者 Christopher Clark 是英国剑桥大学的现代欧洲史教授。引其书评一则,粗体是我标的:Iron Kingdom, Christopher Clark’s stately, authoritative history of Prussia from its humble beginnings to its ignominious end, presents a much more complicated and compelling picture of the German state, which is too often reduced to a caricature of spiked helmets and polished boots. Prussia and its army were inseparable, but Prussia was also renowned for its efficient, incorruptible civil service; its innovative system of social services; its religious tolerance; and its unrivaled education system, a model for the rest of Germany and the world. This too was Prussia—a tormented kingdom that, like a tragic hero, was brought down by the very qualities that raised it up. Mr. Clark, a senior lecturer in modern European history at Cambridge University, does an exemplary job. A lively writer, he organizes masses of material in orderly fashion, clearly establishing his main themes and pausing at crucial junctures to recapitulate and reconsider. Prussia, a self-invented artifact right down to its name, demands the kind of careful demythologizing that it receives from Mr. Clark, who gently but insistently exposes the flaws in most of the received wisdom about his subject. A result is an illuminating, profoundly satisfying work of history, brightened by vivid character sketches of the principals in his drama.这本书写得很深,读起来却很浅,作者捡许多看起来很日常的事情说,过几段发现都是伏笔。文笔不算特别好,但是也流畅生动。而最重要的是,这书一共八百页,有将近两百页是脚注,注明着几乎所有的文献出处…… 缺点大概是这本书从十七世纪开始写起,需要读者对欧洲的中世纪有个大概了解,一上来就读可能有点不知所云。
(William Grimes, New York Times, 2006-09-27)
国内易寻的两本书是浙大丁建弘教授的《德国通史》、《普鲁士的精神和文化》。《德国通史》五百页的篇幅从古日耳曼人讲到两德统一,是一部还不错的概览,尤其是在还不习惯读西方人写历史书那种看似东拉西扯漫不经心的风格之前;《普鲁士的精神和文化》还没有机会读到,但是书评不错。
《剑桥插图德国史》我大略翻过,有点太泛泛了。
原发布于 https://www.zhihu.com/question/22178527/answer/26354628