Germany from Partition to Reunification: A Revised Edition of the Two Germanies Since 1945

In "Germany from Partition to Reunification" Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. presents a very well-written straightforward political history of modern Germany. In the first edition of his book, known as "The Two Germanies since 1945," Turner was praised for his knowledge of the German Democratic Republic, an area in which many American authors had been weak. Not long after the first edition was published in 1987, there was suddenly much more German History to take stock of with the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989. Turner does not let the reader down in his gripping, lean narration of the last suspense-filled months of the East German regime. Turner sprinkles pithy photographs throughout this book and writes in a concise, reader-friendly style. One criticism of the earlier edition was that it focused too narrowly on political history and gave short shrift to social and cultural elements. Turner did well to keep this book as a simple political history with marginal reference to social and cultural history. To include those elements in this work would have been an unweildy task that surely would have ballooned the size of the book and reduced the effectiveness that its conciseness and brevity afford it now. One weakness in the book, however, is the chart showing political institutions of the Federal Republic. While most of it makes sense, it is unclear what the exact relationship is between the State Parliaments and the Federal Assembly. The Federal Assembly is listed separately from the Bundestag. It should be explained more carefully on the chart what the relationships are between these particular bodies. In summary, however, the book is an excellent read.