Dreams & Delusions

In this collection of lectures and articles, Stern assays continuities and contradictions of modern German history, raising anew the question of why so many Germans were seduced by National Socialism. In a piece titled ""The Burden of Success'' he argues that until the advent of Hitler the story of German Jewry was one of triumph``partial, embattled, vilified, but triumph nevertheless.'' In ``Germany and the United States: Visions of a Declining Virtue,'' he discusses what he calls the return of the repressed, the reemergence of ``a whole complex of guilt, shame, and forbidden longing.'' Other essays deal with Albert Einstein's antipathy to Germany, the life of German scientist Fritz Haber, and Ernst Reuter, democratic socialist of the Weimar Republic. In the final section, Stern reviews American scholarship in the field of German history. Stern is the author of Iron and Gold: Bismark, Bleichroder and the Building of the German Empire. (October 16)