German
unification was expected to be a triumph of the human
spirit, of political resourcefulness, and of economic
power. Instead, the process that began in late 1989
when the Berlin Wall came down, has turned into an
unending chronicle of division rather than
unification, and of economic bust rather than boom--a
story of lost opportunities, of misjudgements, of
human alienation, of misspent money, of cultural
arrogance, of unfulfilled promises.
In
this beautifully written work, author and journalist
Simon Burnett breathes life into the East German
people, into their politics, and into the events that
brought them to the present situation.
Ghost
Strasse examines the persisting division between
Eastern and Western Germany, and explains why Eastern
Germans resent the West of the country. It documents
the phenomenal political revival of the so-called
"post communists," and the emergence of a
virulent form of neo-Nazism in the East. As well,
this book is unique in dealing with the tragedy of
unification's forgotten people: former East German
political prisoners, many in ill health as a result
of their imprisonment in brutal conditions and,
inexplicably, often disdained by doctors.
Table of Contents
SIMON
BURNETT is a free-lance reporter who closely followed
the decline and fall of communist East Germany in the
1980s and its fortunes since becoming unified with
capitalist West Germany in 1990. His reports have
appeared in newspapers in many parts of Eastern
Europe and Asia.
256
pages, 6x9, 50 b&w photographs, bibliography,
index
Paperback ISBN: 1-55164-290-5 $24.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-55164-291-3 $53.99
Cultural Studies
European Politics / History
May
2006
