The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918

Blackbourn examines the rise of the idea of "Germanness," the development of presumed national traits such as obedience and antimodernism, and the growth of the bureaucratic state, which favored a kind of corporatism that clashed with trade and agrarian associations and paved the way for the class conflict Karl Marx would analyze--as well as what Blackbourn calls "a strong sense of suffocation." --Gregory McNamee