With Germany in the World award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises
conventional narratives of German history demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German
presence in the world centuries before its unification-and revealing a national identity far
more complicated than previously imagined. Blackbourn traces Germany's evolution from the
loosely bound Holy Roman Empire of 1500 to a sprawling colonial power to a twenty-first-century
beacon of democracy. Viewed through a global lens familiar landmarks of German history-the
Reformation the Revolution of 1848 the Nazi regime-are transformed while others are
unearthed and explored as Blackbourn reveals Germany's leading role in creating modern
universities and its sinister involvement in slave-trade economies. A global history for a
global age Germany in the World is a bold and original account that upends the idea that a
nation's history should be written as though it took place entirely within that nation's
borders.
