Book recommendations in December – Culture

Rachel Kushner – Tough People

Rachel Kushner has been writing compelling essays for twenty years. They are difficult to classify, they are art criticism and autobiography. Her language is floating and pervaded by the recurring motif of violence, which has many facets in Kushner’s work. It shows up in the breakneck motorcycle races that Kushner watches friends die in over the years. Others disappear like their friend Sandy or a rent boy whose head is later found in a dumpster. Kushner also experiences violence in the dreaded Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, where people greet her warmly and yet menacingly because they are armed. In the end she survived her wild life.

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Ralf Zerback – Triumph of Violence. Three German years from 1932 to 1934

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In January, Germany looks back on 90 years of the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship. But the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor was not the decisive step in the conquest of power. The years before and the months after January 30, 1933 were also decisive for the downfall of the Weimar democracy. The historian Ralf Zerback meticulously traces how the NSDAP, through the skilful interplay of legislative repression “from above” in the form of ever new emergency decrees and targeted violence “from below”, overrode the separation of powers and the constitution. And he shows that Hitler’s so-called legal path to power was approved and supported by the vast majority of the population.

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Isabel Fargo Cole – The Gold Coast. A odyssey.

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A glimpse into the past is particularly fascinating when it brings to light what has been forgotten and unearths what was hidden. In her essay, Isabel Fargo Cole not only proves to be an outstanding storyteller, but also one who succeeds in connecting the fine layers of sediment from her family history with forgotten knowledge of the gold rush days in America. False promises were made to the fortune seekers, which included her great-great-grandfather. They were lured into the Yukon Territory and robbed there, became the victims of a gigantic fake that is still called the “gold rush” and is constantly being resurrected in the USA in new forms.

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Mariette Navarro – Across the Sea

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The infinite emptiness on the surface and untold richness below make the ocean a fitting setting for the shudder. Mariette Navarro chooses him for a charismatic story: the captain alone on the freighter, powerful. The crew wriggling in the ocean, powerless. A slight shudder hangs over the scenery when the crew comes back on deck after a swim on the high seas with one man too many. It is impossible to say who it is, as a result inexplicable things happen on board. It is also inexplicable what happened to the captain’s father, who himself piloted a cargo ship and one day disappeared with the ship for a week. Mariette Navarro fascinates with this book, which fortunately only touches on the critique of capitalism, instead trying to transhumanist figures of thought.

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Chelsea Manning – README.txt – My Story

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Chelsea Manning’s memoir reads like a political thriller, written soberly, appropriate to the military milieu in which the first of two crucial turning points takes place. As a military analyst, Manning sees terrible things in Iraq, including civilians, including children, being injured or killed in combat. She cannot reconcile this with her values ​​and publishes secret documents. As a whistleblower, she goes to prison, where she is the first inmate to start hormone therapy. This is the second turning point: escaping the male body that doesn’t fit. Despite the almost distanced style, the personal development creates as much tension as the political circumstances.

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Mariano Barbato – German foreign policy from Bismarck to Scholz

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The Chancellor has the authority to set guidelines in Germany. This is often and often used in foreign policy. In his book, political scientist Mariano Barbato looked at all chancellors from Otto von Bismarck to Olaf Scholz and studied their foreign policy agenda. In these 150 years of German foreign policy, there were many role changes – from overconfidence in colonial politics, to criminal hubris in the Nazi state and the elegant restraint in world conflicts after 1949. Barbato’s colored chancellor portraits (there was a chancellor before) lead him to this Conclusion: Germany needs either more power – or more humility.

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