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1972 saw the coming to fruition of two events of major importance to the Federal Republic of Germany under Willy Brandt's leadership: the normalization of relations with the Soviet Union and its satellites through the process of Ostpolitik, and the Munich Olympic Games, which were designed to present a new Germany on the world stage. Although recent scholarship has highlighted the intricacies of East-West diplomacy and the political machinations of Cold-War sports relations, there have been few attempts to investigate the latter's role in the former. This essay seeks to investigate sport in the context of politics, and more vitally vice versa. Focusing on events in the immediate run-up to the Four Powers Treaty on West Berlin in 1971, it shows how sport's appeal to broad sectors of public opinion in Eastern and Western Europe made it a prime candidate for the cultural warfare that accompanied political negotiations.

Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Review by Mitchell P. Smith

Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries. German Communists and their Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)

Review by Henry Krisch

Victor Grossman (Stephen Wechsler), Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003)

Review by A. James McAdams

Winfried Menninghaus, Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, trans. Howard Eilard and Joel Golb (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003)

Review by Silke Weineck

Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003)

Review by Joel Freeman

Dominik Geppert, The Postwar Challenge: Cultural, Social, and Political Change in Western Europe, 1945-58 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Review by Richard L. Merritt and Anna Merritt

Brett Klopp, German Multiculturalism: Immigrant Integration and the Transformation of Citizenship (Westport, CT: Prager, 2002)

Review by John Brady

On 21 December 2007, the German-Polish border became a "Schengen" border. Passport controls and other limitations to the movement of people and goods were abolished, removing one more obstacle to European and, perhaps, German-Polish integration. Several years earlier, Poland introduced territorial and administrative changes that moved it closer institutionally to western European states. Forty-nine subnational administrative units were replaced by sixteen self-governing voivodships. This article explores the implications of this new institutional context for German-Polish border relations. It finds that, despite the expansion of the opportunity structure for greater German-Polish cross-border cooperation, interaction still tends to be among elites. The development of linkages at the societal level lags behind for several reasons, including lingering institutional impediments and cultural differences, but also the failings of political leadership.

Since the mid-1980s, the growth of multiplex cinemas has transformed the social, industrial, and spatial logics of film exhibition across western Europe. Pioneered in the United States, where they were developed in the mid-1970s as “destination anchors” in suburban retail centers, multiplexes first appeared in Europe in Belgium (as early as 1975), Sweden (1980), and the United Kingdom (1985). In France, multiplex development started comparatively late; a first wave of comprehensive theater modernization and rationalization, launched in the 1960s, had already created a distinctive national model of multiscreen complexes (such that one observer was moved to argue that, by the late 1980s, “without false modesty, France’s film theaters are the most attractive in Europe and among the best in the world”).

Jytte Klausen, The Islamic Challenge. Politics and Religion in Western Europe (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Reviewed by Joyce Mushaben

David Art, The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Reviewed by Antonis Ellinas

Michael Bernhard, Institutions and the Fate of Democracy: Germany and Poland in the 20th Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005))

Reviewed by John Bendix

Brian Rathbun, Partisan Interventions: European Party Politics and Peace Enforcement in the Balkans (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

Reviewed by Charles King

Judd Stitziel, Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany (New York: Berg, 2005).

Reviewed by Catherine Plum

Cindy Skach, Borrowing Constitutional Designs: Constitutional Law in Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

Reviewed by Michael Bernhard

Economics and economic history have a fundamental role to play in our understanding of Cold War Germany. Yet, it is still difficult to establish concrete links between economic phenomena and the most important questions facing post 1945 historians. Obviously, one may evaluate West Germany's “economic miracle,” the success of western European integration, or the end of communism in 1989 from a purely economic point of view. To achieve a deeper understanding of Cold War Germany, however, one must evaluate whether the social market economy represented an adequate response to Nazism, if memory and perspective provided the decisive impulse for European integration, or if the Cold War ended in Europe because of changes in western nuclear strategy. Economic history operates in relation to politics, culture, and historical memory. The parameters for economic action are often as determined by the given political culture of the moment, as they are by the feasibility of alternative economic philosophies.

There is no question that with Barack Obama the United States has a rock star as president who—behooving rock stars—is adored and admired the world over. His being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize nary a year after being elected president and barely ten months into his holding the office, testified to his global popularity rather than his actual accomplishments, which may well turn out to be unique and formidable. And it is equally evident that few—if any—American presidents were more reviled, disdained and distrusted all across the globe than George W. Bush, Obama's immediate predecessor. Indeed, the contrast between the hatred for the former and the admiration for the latter might lead to the impression that the negative attitudes towards America and Americans that was so prevalent during the Bush years have miraculously morphed into a lovefest towards the United States on the part of the global public. This paper—concentrating solely on the German case but representing a larger research project encompassing much of Western Europe—argues that love for Obama and disdain for America are not only perfectly compatible but that, in fact, the two are merely different empirical manifestations of a conceptually singular view of America. Far from being mutually exclusive, these two strains are highly congruent, indeed complementary and symbiotic with each other.

Eugenia C. Kiesling The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory by Alan Forrest

Holly Grout Colette’s Republic: Work, Gender, and Popular Culture in France, 1870–1914 by Patricia A. Tilburg

Laird Boswell Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870–1939 by Christopher J. Fischer

Rosemary Wakeman Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 by Jeffrey H. Jackson

Nicole Rudolph Internationalism, National Identities, and Study Abroad by Whitney Walton

Carolyn J. Eichner Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris by Jennifer Anne Boittin

Robert Zaretsky The French Who Fought for Hitler: Memories from the Outcasts by Philippe Carrard

Paul V. Dutton Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine: The United States, France, and Japan by Marc A. Rodwin

James Shields Party Competition Between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe by Bonnie M. Meguid

Jonathan Laurence Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France and Turkey by Ahmet T. Kuru

Johanna Siméant Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France by Miriam Ticktin