A moving and unsettling exploration of a young man's formative years in a country still struggling with its past As a Jew in postwar Germany, Yascha Mounk felt like a foreigner in his own country. When he mentioned that he is Jewish, some made anti-Semitic jokes or talked about the superiority of the Aryan race. Others, sincerely hoping to atone for the country's past, fawned over him with a forced friendliness he found just as alienating. Vivid and fascinating, Stranger in My Own Country traces the contours of Jewish life in a country still struggling with the legacy of the Third Reich and portrays those who, inevitably, continue to live in its shadow. Marshaling an extraordinary range of material into a lively narrative, Mounk surveys his countrymen's responses to "the Jewish question." Examining history, the story of his family, and his own childhood, he shows that anti-Semitism and far-right extremism have long coexisted with self-conscious philo-Semitism in postwar Germany. But of late a new kind of resentment against Jews has come out in the open. Unnoticed by much of the outside world, the desire for a "finish line" that would spell a definitive end to the country's obsession with the past is feeding an emphasis on German victimhood. Mounk shows how, from the government's pursuit of a less "apologetic" foreign policy to the way the country's idea of the Volk makes life difficult for its immigrant communities, a troubled nationalism is shaping Germany's future.
The 1971 East Pakistan tragedy was not just a failure of the military but also a collapse of civil society in the West Wing.
In The Drinker he recounts the decline of the respectable citizen Erwin Sommer, who feels inferior to his 'remorselessly capable' wife, eventually taking refuge in alcoholism. He becomes violent towards her and ends up in an institution ...
. This is a smart, respectful and compelling book." —Jason DeParle, The New York Times Book Review When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump ...
A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistan, 1969-1971
Bill Griffeth, longtime genealogy buff, takes a DNA test that has an unexpected outcome: "If the results were correct, it meant that the family tree I had spent years documenting was not my own.
Considers the complications of race, religion, sexuality, and gender in Europeanizing from below
This book brings together the thinking of an international group of clinicians, researchers, and professionals from different disciplines and is based primarily on a selection of papers presented at a conference on the same topic held at ...
H 'H \~Vhere I come from, the soldier cracked, “we tell boys like you what to do.” Adams kept his cool, told him to douse his cigarette, and added that they'd discuss the comment later. “After the inspection,” Adams said with a smile, ...
. . . The book is a must-read for anyone who cares about humanity's shared future.” —H.
As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in ...