Overview

In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans have faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history.

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9781665120104

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Reviews

"""An insightful comparative analysis...This exceptional piece of historical and political philosophy provides a meaningful way of looking at the Civil War's legacy."" -- ""Publishers Weekly (starred review)"""

An insightful comparative analysis...This exceptional piece of historical and political philosophy provides a meaningful way of looking at the Civil War's legacy. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author Information

Christa Lewis, winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards, is a classically trained actress and a graduate of Boston University's four-year conservatory training program. She has worked full time at the microphone since getting her start as a newsreader for an international news broadcaster and now narrates audiobooks full time. Susan Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum. Her books, which have been translated into many languages, include Why Grow Up?: Subversive Questions for an Infantile Age, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, The Unity of Reason, and Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin. She also writes cultural and political commentary for diverse media in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain. She studied philosophy at Harvard and the Free University of Berlin and was a professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv Universities.

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