Berlin: Life and Loss in the City That Shaped the Century

In this magisterial biography of a city & its inhabitants, bestselling historian Sinclair McKay sheds new light on well-known characters - from idealistic scientist Albert Einstein to Nazi architect Albert Speer - & draws on never-before-seen first-person accounts to introduce us to people of all walks of Berlin life. For example, we meet office worker Mechtild Evers, who in her efforts to escape an oncoming army runs into even more appalling jeopardy, & Reinhart Cruger, a 12-year-old boy in 1941 who witnesses with horror the Gestapo coming for each of his Jewish neighbours in turn. Ever a city of curious contrasts, moments of unbelievable darkness give way to a wry Berliner humour - from banned perms to the often ridiculous tit-for-tat between East & West Berlin - & moments of joyous hope - like forced labourers at a jam factory warmly welcoming their Soviet liberators.

How did those ideologies - fascism & communism - come to flower so fully here? And how did their repercussions continue to be felt throughout Europe & the West right up until that extraordinary night in the autumn of 1989 when the Wall - that final expression of totalitarian oppression - was at last breached? You cannot...