Includes bibliographical references (pages 584-587) and index.

Introduction: Monuments and memories -- Part 1: Where is Germany? -- The view from the Gate -- Divided heaven -- Lost capitals -- Floating city -- Fragments of power -- Part 2: Imagining Germany -- A language for all Germans -- Snow White vs Napoleon -- One nation under Goethe -- Hall of heroes -- One people, many sausages -- Part 3: The persistent past -- The battle for Charlemagne -- Sculpting the spirit -- The Baltic brothers -- Iron nation -- Two paths from 1848 -- Part 4: Made in Germany -- In the beginning was the printer -- An artist for all Germans -- The white gold of Saxony -- Masters of metal -- Cradle of the modern -- Part 5: The descent -- Bismarck the blacksmith -- The suffering witness -- Money in crisis -- Purging the degenerate -- At the Buchenwald gate -- Part 6: Living with history -- The Germans expelled -- Beginning again -- The new German Jews -- Barlach's Angel -- Germany renewed -- Envoi.

"German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the fifteenth-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it."--