Out of the Darkness

[A] rich, ambitious account of Germany’s improbable rise from a moral abyss to a prosperous democracy that is sometimes held up as a bulwark of stability and liberal values… [the book] remains fresh and surprising throughout, thanks in part to Trentmann’s knack for drawing on an astounding range of voices

Washington Post

Trentmann draws from a wide range of sources, including amateur plays and essays by schoolchildren. These lend intimacy to his portrait of a citizenry engaged in the continuous process of formulating its own views of right and wrong as it debates issues from rearmament to environmentalism

The New Yorker

This history of modern Germany runs to almost 900 pages, but barely a word is wasted. Trentmann is a skilful and unflashy storyteller with flickers of gentle irony. He aims for a grand narrative but I suspect what will live longest in the reader's memory are the vignettes, among them the bourgeois Bundeswehr soldier in Bosnia who believed that the souls of the savage war criminals around him might be redeemed if only he could play them Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Oliver Moody, Sunday Times