Berlin

Life and Death in the City at the Center of the World

By: Sinclair McKay

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

"McKay’s sparkling prose and expert mining of archival material results in a memorable study of a city that has 'alternately seduced and haunted the international imagination.'” - Publisher Weekly

Sinclair McKay's portrait of Berlin from 1919 forward explores the city's broad human history, from the end of the Great War to the Blockade, rise of the Wall, and beyond.

Sinclair McKay's Berlin begins by taking listeners back to 1919, when the city emerged from the shadows of the Great War to become an extraordinary by-word for modernity—in art, cinema, architecture, industry, science, and politics. He traces the city’s history through the rise of Hitler and the Battle for Berlin, which ended in the final conquest of the city in 1945. It was a key moment in modern world history, but beyond the global repercussions lay thousands of individual stories of agony. From the countless women who endured nightmare ordeals at the hands of the Soviet soldiers to the teenage boys fitted with steel helmets too big for their heads and guns too big for their hands, McKay thrusts listeners into the human cataclysm that tore down the modernity of the streets and reduced what was once the most sophisticated city on earth to ruins.

Amid the destruction, a collective instinct was also at work—a determination to restore not just the rhythms of urban life but also its fierce creativity. In Berlin today, there is a growing and urgent recognition that the testimonies of the ordinary citizens from 1919 forward should be given more prominence. That the housewives, office clerks, factory workers, and exuberant teenagers who witnessed these years of terrifying—and for some, initially exhilarating—transformation should be heard. Today, the exciting, youthful Berlin we see is patterned with echoes that lean back into that terrible vortex. In this new history of Berlin, Sinclair McKay erases the lines between the generations of Berliners, making their voices heard again to create a compelling, living portrait of life in this city that lay at the center of the world.

©2022 Sinclair McKay (P)2022 Spotify Audiobooks

Excellent historical background of Berlin

A remarkably complete book, covering the history of Berlin up to and through the demolition of the wall. I read this prior to visiting the city, and it greatly enriched my experience of the city.

Very I informative

This was a really enjoyable and informative listen … I hope every one enjoys as much as I have ..,

Excellent descriptions of life of citizens and military.

Coverage from variety of points of view, citizens, survivors, military and political. Complicated time for the world. Horrendous for so many innocent people.