In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt used elements of Israeli interrogations and portions of the Jerusalem trial to reconstruct Eichmann's career, his role in the Final Solution, and, in sketchy strokes, the Final Solution itself. She did not cover the trial in detail: In his memoirs, Raul Hilberg even suggested that she did not personally attend Eichmann's testimony. A philosopher by training, she also did not conduct primary source research. She simply read deeply into Eichmann's own version of events, accepting much, questioning some, creating a plausible and readable story that included scenes from the trial.

The impetus among Germany's cultural elite to mark the end of World War II as a “zero hour” has been analyzed mainly as a German phenomenon, with considerably less attention to the role of the occupying forces in fostering that mentality. Settling Scores offers a long-awaited analysis of the American Military Government's precarious navigation in the music world, one of the most sensitive cultural areas for both the conquerors and the conquered. Most histories of twentieth-century German music and culture suffer from a basic misunderstanding of this tumultuous time and uncritically accept many of the prejudices it engendered. As this study demonstrates, the notion of a musical “zero hour” is one such misconception, for the imperfect projects of denazification and reeducation left the musical world of the post-war period largely indistinguishable from its pre-war existence. Based on thorough archival research, interviews with eyewitnesses, and a wide range of literature, this highly readable and engaging history reveals in detail the successes and failures of the Military Government's ambitious agenda to root out the musical “Führers” of the Third Reich and to transform music from a tool of nationalist aggression to one of democratic tolerance.

For Ludwig Erhard, West Germany's “legendary” Minister of Economics, mass consumption played a vital role in the country's postwar recovery. Consumer goods, as he stated in 1949, were the “very foundation of our entire economic, social, and national being” (p. 183). In The Authority of Everyday Objects, Paul Betts explores the centrality of mass consumption to West Germany's postwar history, analyzing how industrial design was called upon to create a sense of national identity following the war. Works from several scholars—Erica Carter, Michael Wildt, Kathy Pence, Uta Poiger, Jonathan Wiesen, and others—have explored the centrality of the national economy and mass consumption to postwar reconstruction. To these works, Betts adds a specific emphasis on design. As he states at the start of his study, consumer goods were to have a particular look, and design was given a powerful place in West German society. It became the chosen terrain for creating a revived sense of national identity following the disasters of dictatorship, war, and genocide. In the postwar period, an “elective affinity” was forged between “industrial design and the rehabilitation of the ‘good German’” (p. 1), he writes. In six chapters, he explores in absorbing detail how industrial design, with its single-minded mission to turn “mere” commodities into “cultural objects” (Kulturgüter), was invested with political meaning in postwar West Germany. The new world of consumer goods, supported by official discourses on the social importance of “good design,” both rehabilitated West Germany's image internationally and exhibited a desirable vision of consumer citizenship to domestic audiences.

Kristina Spohr Readman's book, Germany and the Baltic Problem after the Cold War, serves as a fine example of what historians can achieve in the field of contemporary history. Her study provides a detailed account of the political process of German unification and its consequences for its neighbors. By drawing on archival sources that have, for various reasons, become available before the usual closure period has expired, along with interviews, memoirs, and published documents, she has provided a painstaking, scholarly analysis of the manifold transitions in European relations that took place in the wake of the unexpected events of 1989.