Review - Dreamers: When the Writers Took Power, Germany 1918

Dreamers: When the Writers Took Power, Germany 1918

I received an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting book of German pop history in English translation, looking at a fairly brief revolutionary interlude in Munich's history in 1918/1919. It's easy to forget, especially from an American perspective, how many changes in power and short-lived revolutions occurred in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, and this one is perhaps especially eclipsed by subsequent history. The book provides an easy-to-read account, and in addition to discussing the roles of the writers and other intellectuals who were directly involved, touches on the responses of various prominent figures of the German literary world.

The book's very conversational style makes it a rather quick read, though the blending of past and present tense makes for a somewhat odd reading experience (in my opinion, anyway). I don't know whether this is the result of the translation, the source material, or both. The book's content seems fairly clearly intended for a non-specialist German audience, which presents a little bit of a question on who exactly the intended audience is for the translation--a niche subject for a general pop history-reading audience (though there seems to be above-average interest in interwar Germany at the moment), but treated in a form clearly not intended for a more academic one.

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