display
The list of recommendations with the greatest circulation in the German-speaking area appears here every month.
The media partners are LITERARISCHE WELT, “NZZ”, RBB Kultur and Austria 1. Experts select ten non-fiction books of the month (no specialist books) from the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences and economics.
Charlatans, half-truths and Hitler's father are particularly worth reading in March.
1. Grete de Francesco:
The power of the charlatan.
The Other Library, 455 pages, € 44.
display
Buy "The Art of the Charlatan" online now
Order from Amazon
“The Power of the Charlatan” from 1937 is considered an international standard work on the subject of charlatanism, written by the Austrian-Jewish scholar Grete de Francesco.
A cultural story about faith healers and populists - and a tale of the seductiveness of humans.
2. Milena Jesenská:
display
Prague backyards in spring.
Features and reports 1919 - 1939. Edited by Alena Wagnerova.
Translated by Kristina Kallert, Wallstein, 416 p., 32 €.
display
Buy "Prague Backyards in Spring" online
Order from Amazon
Milena Jesenská is known as Franz Kafka's friend.
The work of the columnist and journalist has yet to be discovered in this country.
This volume brings together their reports, including from the Sudeten regions between the National Socialist and Czech fronts.
3. Bernd Stegemann:
The public and their enemies.
Klett-Cotta, 384 p., 22 €.
display
Buy "The Public and Their Enemies" online
Order from Amazon
display
The politics of identity is one of the greatest threats to freedom, believes the dramaturge Bernd Stegemann.
His book discusses a public that has long ceased to be the solution, but the problem.
4. Jörg Armbruster:
The heirs of the revolution.
What remains of the Arab Spring?
Hoffmann and Campe, 304 pp., € 25.
display
Buy "The Heirs of the Revolution" online
Order from Amazon
In 2011 the uprisings of the Arab youth electrified the world, democracy seems to be within reach.
Why is the balance so sobering 10 years later?
An analysis by ARD correspondent Jörg Armbruster.
5. Peter Fabjan:
display
A life at the side of Thomas Bernhard.
A report.
Suhrkamp, 195 pp., € 24.
display
Buy "A life by your side ..." online now
Order from Amazon
The Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard would have turned 90 this year.
With this book, his half-brother and estate administrator gives insights into a person behind the literary Suada.
6. Roman Sandgruber:
Hitler's father.
How the son became a dictator.
Molden, 272 p., 29 €.
display
Buy "Hitler's Father" online now
Order from Amazon
How spectacular is this source find in an Upper Austrian attic?
31 previously unknown letters from Hitler's father Alois to his son Adolf are the subject of this book.
7. Sigrid Damm:
Goethe and Carl August.
Vicissitudes of friendship.
Insel Verlag, 320 pp., € 24.
display
Buy "Goethe and Carl August" online now
Order from Amazon
The prince poet and his patron, the Duke of Weimar, have been friends for more than fifty years.
Sigrid Damm, famous biographer ("Christiane und Goethe") tells us what made the Weimar Classicism constellation.
8. Nicola Gess:
Half-truths
.
To manipulate reality.
Matthes & Seitz, 159 pp., 14 €.
display
Buy "half-truths" online now
Order from Amazon
display
Whether fake news, conspiracy theories or populist propaganda: none of them can do without half-truths and their manipulation of reality.
With this book, Nicola Gess presents a theory of half-truth in which it is not true or false, but believable versus unreliable.
9. Jay Howard Geller:
The scholems.
History of a German-Jewish family.
Translated by Ruth Keen.
Jewish publishing house, 462 pages, € 25.
display
Buy "The Scholems" online now
Order from Amazon
Gerhard Scholem, later known as Gershom Scholem and one of the most important researchers of Jewish mysticism, is only the best-known figure of a family whose biography also reflects a social history of Judaism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
10. Gerd Schwerhoff:
Cursed gods.
The history of blasphemy.
S. Fischer, 521 pages, 29 €.
display
Buy "Cursed Gods" online now
Order from Amazon
A great history of blasphemy from ancient times (with Judaism and early Christianity), through the Middle Ages and early modern times (with Inquisition, heresy and Reformation) to the Enlightenment and today's confrontations in the area of tension between Christianity, secularism and Islam.
The extra recommendation of the month
This time it comes from Joachim Treusch (Bremen).
He recommends:
Tim Bouverie: Talk to Hitler.
The path from appeasement to World War II.
Rowohlt, 704 pp., € 28.
“'It has happened, and consequently it can happen again.'
This warning from the first half of the last century is as urgent today as the question.
'How did it happen?'
demanded - and demanded - answers.
display
The young historian and journalist Tim Bouverie draws from hundreds of sources (some of them are private, he is the great-grandson of the Duke of Buccleuch) to create a convincing story of the war-weary British society of the 1930s and its politicians on their long path from appeasement to compose under Neville Chamberlain to the clear-sighted and convincing war premier Winston Churchill.
The result is as rich in content as it is exciting to read - reading and lesson for today too. "(Joachim Treusch)
The jury of the non-fiction books of the month
Tobias Becker, “Spiegel”; Kirstin Breitenfellner, “Falter”, Vienna; Manon Bischoff, “Spectrum of Science”; Natascha Freundel, RBB Culture; Eike Gebhardt, Berlin; Daniel Haufler, Berlin; Prof. Jochen Hörisch, University of Mannheim; Günter Kaindlstorfer, Vienna; Otto Kallscheuer, Sassari, Italy; Petra Kammann, “FeuilletonFrankfurt”; Jörg-Dieter Kogel, Bremen; Wilhelm Krull, The New Institute, Hamburg; Marianna Lieder, freelance critic, Berlin; Prof. Herfried Münkler, Humboldt University; Marc Reichwein, WORLD; Thomas Ribi, "Neue Zürcher Zeitung"; Prof. Sandra Richter, German Literature Archive Marbach; Wolfgang Ritschl, ORF; Florian Rötzer, "Telepolis"; Norbert Seitz, Berlin; Anne-Catherine Simon, “Die Presse”, Vienna; Prof. Philipp Theisohn, University of Zurich; Andreas Wang, Berlin; Michael Wiederstein, getAbstract, Lucerne; Harro Zimmermann, Bremen; Stefan Doubt, Switzerland