Customer Rating:  
Summary: Dry political history
Comment: Obviously you can't write a book about the Berlin Wall or the Second World War without including a lot of politics. I was expecting that. But this book goes to extremes. It is top-heavy history. Taylor is too concerned with the statesmen, the politicians, the generals, the ministers, etc., and their speeches, decisions and policies.
Very little of this book is given over to the little people and their inconsequential -- but fascinating -- lives and experiences. I would certainly have liked more of this sort of thing. Instead I discovered within its tissue-thin, Bible-like pages nothing but politics and -- worse -- economics and statistics!
Also, I don't think Taylor includes much analysis. He tells us who was involved and what occurred with commendable exactitude (plenty of dates and times), but he fails to say enough about WHY this happened and what the consequences were. I think he's aiming this book at readers who already know something about the Berlin Wall and aren't, as I am, too young to know much about it.
Still, I think I learned something from this book even if it glossed over the lives of the ordinary East and West Berliners a bit. I think Taylor could have included a few more interesting anecdotes and personal testimonies without compromising the status of the book as a work of 'serious' history.
PS: I like the cover artwork, but the pages come perilously close to falling out when the spine is creased!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great, fast - paced read.
Comment: I am unsure what the people who didn't enjoy this were actaully looking for. It is true that the Wall is not built until half way through the book but what went before is perhaps as important as the wall itself. Whenever a history of an event or time period is written it is vital that the reader understands exactly why the event happened or where that period fits into the narrative of its history.
As for the end being rushed, I entirely disagree. It is fast, short and breathless. I think this is fitting, after all the state of East Germany had existed for 40 years and took a matter of weeks to collapse. I would have liked to know more about the feelings of the people standing on the wall on that November night in 1989 but this is my only criticism of an otherwise fantastic book.
As for the 70's and 80's being skipped over, what do you want to know? People continued to suffer at the hands of a regime that to the outside world was stable and showed no signs of what was to come. I believe that to have included too much detail about this period would have meant that the book lost its pace and that, to me at least, is one of the outstanding features.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Rivetting in the main, spoilt by a rushed ending
Comment: This book could best be described as schizophrenic. It starts off with a detailed history of Germany going back to the time of the Vikings, and explains the post-war geography of Europe in vivid detail; the Berlin Wall isn't even built until about the half-way stage. Once the wall is built, however, the book feels like it was rushed and over-simplified. There is plenty of description of the many attempts to breakout of East Germany to West Berlin but there is insufficient detail as to why East Germany failed and for all the talk of how the Wall divided families there is little social and human history here which would explain the desperation of the East Germans. The events of November 1989, when the wall was finally pulled down, are rushed through at indecent pace, only about 50 pages describe this event and it's aftermath which is ridiculous bearing in mind the book is almost 700 pages long. It's not often you can say that a book of this length could benefit from being longer but at the end there is a feeling of being sold short.
Customer Rating:
Summary: good subject, poor book
Comment: While the subject is fascinating, I found this poorly written, with unnecessary repetition and the author jumping around all over the place - quite how the detailed description of the GDR leaders' houses fitted into the rest of the chapter is still unclear to me. There also seemed to be an anti-GDR/Soviet bias - it is not made as clear as it should have been exactly why the Soviets cut off the Western part of Berlin and harassed the US and British in the first place. And as a previous reviwer wrote, the 1980's is skimmed over. Best avoided. Read Tony Judt instead.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Comment: This is a superb book giving not only the history of the building of the wall and up to its demise but also a brief history of Berlin and how it evolved over the centuries.
Superb
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