Walls That Remain: Eastern and Western Germans Since Reunification [Hardcover]

The Walls That Remain explores the trauma of German reunification in 1990 as it affected ordinary Eastern and Western Germans. Told mainly in their own words, this book features the voices of those Germans who have suffered as well as profited from the transformations in German society since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Germany's reunification in October 1990.The Walls That Remain explores the trauma of German reunification in 1990 as it affected ordinary Eastern and Western Germans.This book is a truly impressive work. It is beautifully conceived and executed, as well as intellectually and morally engaging. Above all, it is so very well-written with a lively style, a tempered wit, a remarkable literary and historical erudition, and a refreshing human empathy. The portraits are robust and dominant. I could swear that some of Roddens conversation partners have crossed my path over the years, under different names to be sure.
Christian Soe, California State University at Long Beach

This book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the functioning of dictatorship as well as to the general processes of social change. I am most impressed by the beautiful essayistic style and sovereign command of German conversational language and everyday slang. This is an excellent book that will be of great value to the scholar and general reader alike.
Karl-Heinz Fuessl, Institute for Education and History, Humboldt University, Berlin

One of the most appealing features of the book is Roddens lively, witty, and forceful writing style. This style is thoroughly compatible with the books sound scholarship, because it serves to highlight his basic themes by giving dramatic power to various anecdotes, personal encounters, and historical scenes. Most engaging is Roddens very personal viewpoint in his portraits of the East Germans that he interviewed. His vignettes show vividly the fateful determinatiol.