Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany Audiobook

Quotes

• Brilliant. Hoyer is a historian of immense ability. Exhaustively researched, cleverly constructed, and beautifully written, this much-needed history of the GDR should be required reading across her homeland. Five stars.”  —Saul David, Daily Telegraph

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• Enthralling, fascinating, and very readable history.

  — Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday

• A rich, counterintuitive history of a country all too often dismissed as a freak or accident of the Cold War.”  —Observer

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• A vivid political story of the communist German state.

  — Economist

• Myth-busting, artfully constructed history. Hoyer displays a special understanding and wants to present a corrective to previous reductive assessments of the GDR that depict it as a field-gray Stasiland. Her command of detail, broad historical brush strokes, and evident sympathy for her interview partners make for a fascinating read.”  —Roger Boyes, Times (London)

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• Having begun her life behind the wall, Hoyer tells the story of the GDR with emotional intensity but also with the detachment and balance of a professional historian who is determined to portray both the good and bad. And a very interesting story it is, too.”  —Oliver Letwin, The Tablet

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• Tremendous. Until the publication of Beyond the Wall, there hadn’t been an English-language history of the GDR with which to color in that vanished country’s past.”  —Peter Hoskins, Prospect

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• A bold, deft history of the forty-one years of the German Democratic Republic. Hoyer is a historian with skin in the game.”  —John Kampfner, Literary Review

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• Beyond the Wall is not just a superb history of East Germany. It is most certainly that, but it is also an outstanding history, full stop. Hoyer’s blend of deeply personal and human stories with high politics and culture brings the story of the GDR vividly to life and shows how the legacy of East Germany is very much alive in Germany and Europe today."  —Diplomatic Courier

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• “A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe, and the forging of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

  — Peter Frankopan, New York Times bestselling author

• “With Beyond the Wall, Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. A masterpiece.”

  — Andrew Roberts, New York Times bestselling author

• “Superb, totally fascinating, and compelling, Hoyer’s first full history of East Germany’s rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research—and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading.”

  — Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author

• “Hoyer brilliantly shows the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union.”

  — Serhii Plokhy, New York Times bestselling author

• “Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy, and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.”

  — Lea Ypi, author of Free

• “A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history’s most fascinating political curiosities.”

  — Frederick Taylor, author of The Berlin Wall

• Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively, and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe.”  —Julia Boyd, author of Travelers in the Third Reich

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• The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall, Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced, and filled with interesting people.

  — Ivan Krastev, author of After Europe

• Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English-speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.”  —Dan Snow, History Hit

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• A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that—for a time—worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism.”  —Owen Hatherley, author of Landscapes of Communism

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• “What makes this meticulous book essential reading is not so much its sense of what East Germans lost but of what we never had.”

  — Guardian

• [F]ast-paced, vivid and engaging.

  — Times Literary Supplement

• Forget everything you thought you knew about life in the GDR. This terrifically colorful, surprising, and enjoyable history of the socialist state is full of surprises. Enormously refreshing.”  —Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

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