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German Europe Hardcover – 8 Mar 2013

by
Ulrich Beck (Author)
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Ulrich Beck (Author), Rodney Livingstone (Translator)
3.4 out of 5 stars 18 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 120 pages
  • Publisher: Polity Press; 1 edition (8 Mar. 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 074566539X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0745665399
  • Product Dimensions: 14.5 x 1.5 x 22.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 662,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"A compelling analysis of Germany."
The Economist

"A blistering indictment of Germany′s modern–day economic domination, by one of Germany′s most distinguished intellectuals."
Daily Mail

"A brilliant and succinct analysis of the political genius of Angela Merkel."
Charles Moore,Sunday Telegraph

"A short but punchy book by the distinguished German sociologist."
Prospect

"A welcome tonic to reactionary discourses on the ills of Brussels."
Times Literary Supplement

"Democracy won’t be real in Europe until that kind of law has to be proposed, debated, and voted on by all concerned. Beck has moved us a small step closer to this highly desirable consummation, and to a unified political will in Europe, by getting his readers accustomed to thinking of a ′European Germany′ rather than a ′German Europe′."
Los Angeles Review of Books

"Diagnoses Europe′s troubles with a realism and clarity that suggests a long and arduous road ahead."
Financial Times

"A thought–provoking essay on the European economic crisis, recommended to all interested in this topic."
Journal of Global Faultlines

"A brilliant analysis of Europe′s shifting landscape of power."
Joschka Fischer, Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany, 1998–2005

"An immensely incisive and encouraging book.  Not only does it present an eye–opening outlook on Europe′s crisis, it also offers a credible solution."
Daniel Cohn–Bendit, MEP and co–president of the Greens/Free European Alliance Group in the European Parliament

"Ulrich Beck′s German Europe is one of those rare and brilliant political tracts that offers us a new language with which to understand the present crisis so that we can shape the future."
Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance, LSE

 

About the Author

Ulrich Beck is one of the world’s leading sociologists and social thinkers, well–known for his best–selling book Risk Society. He is Emeritus Professor at Munich and Professor of Sociology at the LSE.

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Top Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsImpassioned tour de force
By Martin Turner HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on 14 Sept. 2013
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
German Europe is an impassioned essay which sets off from horror at the premise that Germany should decide the fate of Greece, to a prescription for a new Europe which is sufficiently transnational for Germany not to trouble it again. On the way Ulrich Beck bulldozes many comfortable beliefs about how Europe came to be, how it should operate, and what would happen if it ceased. Unfortunately, like every other tour de force, it never applies the same degree of critical brutality to its own premises.

One of the reviewers on the back cover describes this as a 'brilliant tract'. I'm not sure that it is quite 'brilliant', but it is certainly a tract. Beck's prose is without nuance. He calmly and collectedly states his position, dealing with anything which stands in his way, letting the underlying force of his argument carry the passion from page to page. However, he never takes the time to consider opposing views, except in order to dismiss them.

There is a degree of soul-searching and hand-wringing in this book which you probably have to be German to really respond to. Hitler and the Third Reich lie across it like a heavy shadow, and there is rather more Teutonic guilt spread across the pages than I'm usually comfortable with. The underlying claim is that Germany is achieving a dominance by economic and political means which it was never able to sustain by military means.

From the perspective from which this book is written, it is hard to argue with its conclusions. However, it is not the only perspective, and most British readers will spot this straight away. The premise that there is something fundamentally wrong with a vote in the German parliament determining the fate of Greece should give the game away.Read more ›
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2.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing essay
By Alan J. Stedall VINE VOICE on 28 April 2013
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
I found this a disappointing book, or rather, a disappointing essay, since the "book" is just some 86 pages long.

Beck states in the Preface, regarding the present "European crisis":-

"is it not the reality that the preoccupation with a political union has obscured the crucial question, that of a European society, for so long that we have ended up leaving the most important factor out of the reckoning altogether ? That factor is the sovereign people, the citizens of Europe. So let us put society back in. What needs to be done in the midst of this financial crisis is to shed light on the power shifts in Europe and to delineate the new landscape of power. That is the goal of this essay."

Beck then spends sixty-five pages of his eighty-six describing how Germany has unwillingly emerged as the loan-master of most of the rest of Europe, whilst in return for her support Germany has demanded increasing levels of austerity from the debtor nations; this in no small part to placate the anger of the German electorate at finding themselves having to bail out the "lazy, spendthrift, corrupt nations of Southern Europe".

In the remaining twenty-two pages of his essay Beck describes his proposed solution for Europe's ills: a new pan-European sense of identity, under-pinned by a new social contract.

I must confess I found the first part of Beck's essay, which is a description of the new German hegemony of Europe, as no more than a detailed analysis of a situation of which I was already sufficiently aware.

The second part of Beck's essay, ie. a call for a new European-wide sense of perspective and social contract, I found, frankly, unworldly and unrealistic, given the intense societal pressures arising from the "European crisis".Read more ›
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2.0 out of 5 starsA dissection of the seemingly obvious
By Dolphin #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER on 14 April 2014
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
I may have read a few too many polemics on Europe and have become weary. I thought the notion that Germany had lost the war but won the economic peace was an accepted reality. Reading Beck was somewhat like listening to a first year sociology student speechifying for the first time.

It is almost fifty years since Beck was a first year; he has little to prove and I would have thought that his ability to communicate his ideas fluently and with economy of construct would by now have been honed to perfection. Taking a sentence at random by furling the pages and hitting a line with my finger I find:

“The economists who gave us their responses to the crisis make the situation more easily comprehensible but at the same time the ‘interpreters of capitalism’ tend to reduce the complexity of the global financial markets in a disconcerting fashion”.

Perhaps it is his translator’s fault but I would not use the word ‘lucid’ to describe Beck’s prose and I found reading some sections were the mental equivalent of consuming cream crackers without any water to aid the process.

There is also the question of what he is trying to say. It may be that my intellect is poor but there seems little point in dissecting and extrapolating a thought to an academic degree unless one seeks to reveal a further truth. Take an apple pie, render it down and analyse its constituents and it is still an apple pie.

As far as I could decipher, Beck made some fairly obvious points but in abstruse language. A weakened, wider Europe is increasingly dancing to Germany’s tune, which is codifying our economic and political future … and we should be wary. I think I’ve got that, but then, I thought we all believed (to a greater or lesser degree) that was the case. Like the apple pie, I am not sure that a detailed dissection actually adds anything.
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