Berlin and Its Culture: A Historical Portrait
What is the culture of a city?  Is it the corporate personality, the politics of the founders, the undertaking of its artists and visionaries?Berlin and Its Culturesurveys all these arenas, paying particular attention to the writers, philosophers, actors, and later, interior designers and filmmakers. In relating the lives and accomplishments of its inhabitants, Ronald Taylor maps the social patterns of the city in fascinating detail.Taylor takes care to include accounts of life in both East and West Berlin, and while he does provide some coverage of Nazi culture, he does not perform an in-depth analysis.  Rather, with his focus on the periods of artistic proliferation, he writes at length on the Romanticism of Berlin's early years and the flourishing of literature during the Weimar period.The book itself is a weighty, glossy endeavor. The reader can not turn a page or two without encountering an illustration, painting reproduction (often in color), or elaborate map of the changing face of the city.Berlin and Its Cultureis a visual, visceral treat and an appealing survey of one of the world's most complex locales.