Some reviewers here complain that this is not an academic (or scrupulously accurate) history of the German Empire, but I think they’re missing the point. The author is a journalist, not an historian, and he never claims to be writing a history book; indeed, he covers a variety of things that no proper history book would cover (his reaction to various museums and monuments; his opinion of vacations on the Baltic Sea), and inevitably he oversimplifies or omits a great deal. But read as an essay - touching on the things the author finds interesting rather than presenting a straightforward account of Central European history - it will nonetheless be an entertaining introduction for most English speakers to the fascinating and complicated story of the lands that only fairly recently became ‘Germany’.

With humour and whimsy, Winder covers Germany as it developed and survived from its pre-historical origins right up until the rise of Hitler, at which point, he concludes, “Anecdotal facetiousness has to get out of the way and simply stop”.