Berlin: Portrait of a City Through the Centuries

The admiration and love travel writer and filmmaker MacLean (Stalin’s Nose) has for Berlin is evident throughout this history of the city, which begins in the 17th century. His careful arrangement of detail and far-reaching scope make for a perfect description of e one of Europe’s most enigmatic and controversial cities. When Berlin was just a small town, isolated from the busier marketplaces in what is now Germany, it was a city “incapable of tenderness,” one that “only ran fiery hot or bitter cold.” As he moves through the years, depicting the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War and the establishment of the Prussian state, the narrative’s tempo picks up. MacLean visits new eras in each successive chapter (assigning all of them with a theme and representative figure), engulfing readers in the atmosphere of the city and the lives of Berliners both ordinary and noteworthy. It’s when he explores the minds of Berlin’s modern masters—particularly Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie, with whom the author made films —that MacLean reveals his prowess as a storyteller, flawlessly weaving together history, facts, and folklore. Moreover, MacLean’s treatment of Berlin under The Third Reich and during the Cold War perfectly reflects the tension of the city’s own attempts at remembrance. MacLean brings this “city of fragments and ghosts,” with its fractured and volatile past, to life. Photos. [em](Oct.) [/em]