Unmasterable Past

Charles S. Maier is Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has written a number of award-winning books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe, The Unmasterable Past, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany, and Once Within Borders.

• Preface, 1997 Preface to the Original Edition Introduction The Stakes of the Controversy Habermas among the Historians A Holocaust like the Others? Problems of Comparative History German History as Case History A Usable Past? Museums, Memory, and Identity Epilogue: Whose Holocaust? Whose History? Notes Index

Maier has written what is the best book available on the tangled and acrimonious debate among the German historians. It is incisive in its analysis of the arguments on all sides of the debate and admirably objective in its assessment of them.