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Another unsolicited recommendation in a similar vein: Edith Sheffer's "Burned Bridge" (https://www.amazon.com/Burned-Bridge-East-Germans-Curtain/dp...). It's similar in that it offers a somewhat unconventional lens to history, this time applied to the Cold War. As Americans, we often think of the East-West German divide in terms of Soviet and American interests, politicians, and international intrigue. Yet, for "normal" Germans living in otherwise "normal" towns, the arbitrary partitioning of their country along hastily-drawn lines was an event that had to be integrated into their daily lives. We often think of history in top-down ways (i.e. FDR and Stalin decided that X would happen, and so it did). This book really subverts that narrative, and instead presents a brilliantly-researched and significantly chaotic reality. You come away thinking that the iron curtain was not an inevitable thing, but rather the result of frequent misunderstandings and breakdowns in effective communication, and the inability of distanced leaders to assume good intent. For me, it changed my default perspective on how borders and bureaucratic systems work, and what role law and top-down decision making (good, bad, influential and negligible) has in everyday life, especially in moments of big change. It's tangentially relevant to the coronavirus, where big bureaucracies are trying to flex into everyday life. It gives you some intuition of where we should expect these efforts to succeed, and where we can expect it to fail. |