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Sonnevend, J. (2016). Stories without borders: the Berlin Wall and the making of a global iconic event<\/em>. Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n “This book asks how particular news events become \u201cglobal iconic events,\u201d while others fade into oblivion. Focusing on journalists covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and on subsequent retellings of the event (from Legoland reenactments to segments of the Berlin Wall installed in shopping malls), it discusses how storytellers build up certain events so that people in many parts of the world remember them for long periods of time. The East German border opening that we now summarize as the \u201cfall of the Berlin Wall\u201d was in fact unintentional, confusing, and prompted in part by misleading media coverage of bureaucratic missteps. But its global message is not about luck or accident or happenstance in history. Incarnated as a global iconic event, the \u201cfall of the Berlin Wall\u201d has come to communicate the momentary power that vulnerable ordinary people can have. The event\u2019s story, branded into a simple phrase, a short narrative and a recognizable visual scene, provides people from China to Turkey to the United States with a contemporary social myth. This myth shapes our debates about separation walls and fences, borders and refugees, and the possibilities of human freedom to this day.” \u2013 from Oxford Academic<\/a><\/p>\n D\u00fcmpelmann, S. (2019). Seeing trees: a history of street trees in New York City and Berlin<\/em>. Yale University Press.<\/p>\n “A fascinating and beautifully illustrated volume that explains what street trees tell us about humanity\u2019s changing relationship with nature and the city.<\/p>\n \u201cA deep . . . dive into urban society\u2019s need for\u2014and relationship with\u2014trees that sought to return the natural world to the concrete jungle.\u201d\u2014Adrian Higgins, Washington Post<\/p>\n Today, cities around the globe are planting street trees to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, as landscape historian Sonja D\u00fcmpelmann explains, the planting of street trees in cities to serve specific functions is not a new phenomenon. In her eye-opening work, D\u00fcmpelmann shows how New York City and Berlin began systematically planting trees to improve the urban climate during the nineteenth century, presenting the history of the practice within its larger social, cultural, and political contexts.<\/p>\n A unique integration of empirical research and theory, D\u00fcmpelmann\u2019s richly illustrated work uncovers this important untold story. Street trees\u2014variously regarded as sanitizers, nuisances, upholders of virtue, economic engines, and more\u2014reflect the changing relationship between humans and nonhuman nature in urban environments. Offering valuable insights and frameworks, this authoritative volume will be an important resource for years to come.” \u2013 from Yale University Press<\/a><\/p>\n Paeslack, M. (2019). Constructing imperial Berlin: photography and the metropolis<\/em>. University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n “Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city that once visually epitomized a divided Europe has thrived in the international spotlight as an image of reunified statehood and urbanity. Yet research on Berlin\u2019s past has focused on the interwar years of the Weimar Republic or the Cold War era, with much less attention to the crucial Imperial years between 1871 and 1918.<\/p>\n Constructing Imperial Berlin is the first book to critically assess, contextualize, and frame urban and architectural photographs of that era. Berlin, as it was pronounced Germany\u2019s capital in 1871, was fraught with questions that had previously beset Paris and London. How was urban expansion and transformation to be absorbed? What was the city\u2019s understanding of its comparably short history? Given this short history, how did it embody the idea of a capital? A key theme of this book is the close interrelation of the city\u2019s rapid physical metamorphosis with repercussions on promotional and critical narratives, the emergence of groundbreaking photographic technologies, and novel forms of mass distribution.<\/p>\n Providing a rare analysis of this significant formative era, Miriam Paeslack shows a city far more complex than the common clich\u00e9s as a historical and aspiring place suggest. Imperial Berlin emerges as a modern metropolis, only half-heartedly inhibited by urban preservationist concerns and rather more akin to North American cities in their bold industrialization and competing urban expansions than to European counterparts.” \u2013 from University of Minnesota Press<\/a><\/p>\n Beachy, R. (2015). Gay Berlin: birthplace of a modern identity<\/em>. Vintage Books, Penguin Random House LLC.<\/p>\n “In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts\u2014the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights organization, the first Institute for Sexual Science, the first sex reassignment surgeries\u2014exploring and educating themselves and the rest of the world about new ways of understanding the human condition. In this fascinating examination of how the uninhibited urban culture of Berlin helped create our categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, Robert Beachy guides readers through the past events and developments that continue to shape and influence our thinking about sex and gender to this day.” \u2013 from Penguin Random House<\/a><\/p>\n Larkins, D., & Hardy, L. (2019). Berlin: the wicked city\u202f: unveiling the mythos in Weimar Berlin<\/em>. Chaosium, Inc.<\/p>\n “In the aftermath of the Great War, Berlin has a reputation for licentiousness. A place where anything may be had for the right price. It is both a city of hedonism and a city of business; its streets overflow with disabled veterans, prostitutes, destitute immigrants, and political agitators\u2014all rubbing shoulders with buttoned-down businessmen, scholars, and artists. The gutters run with the blood of political assassinations, where Communists and v\u00f6lkisch Nationalists clash with each other, as well as with the police. Long into the evenings, Berlin\u2019s world-famous cabarets offer music, dance, and titillating entertainment in stark contrast to the gray buildings that run on for endless miles along the sprawling city\u2019s byways.<\/p>\n Into this bubbling stew, Berlin the Wicked City introduces the weird elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. A hotbed of occult organizations, strange cults, and half-whispered lore. Amid the wicked air of the world\u2019s capital of sin, the very nature of what it means to be human is questioned. And, as the city hurtles toward its inevitable dark destiny, the oppressive atmosphere pushes the sanity of investigators to its breaking point.<\/p>\n This book presents an overview of 1920s Berlin as it would be experienced by visitors and residents of the time. Guidelines are presented for creating investigators for a Berlin-centric campaign, as well as investigator organizations to help bind groups together. Notable personalities, key locations, and a system for generating details of the urban landscape on the fly are provided. With crime and punishment, the city\u2019s underworld, and also its high culture detailed, the tools provided help the Keeper gain an understanding of what makes Berlin unique.” \u2013 from Chaosium<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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