Abstract
Measured against its subject, German history from the ancient forests to the “Berlin Republic,” A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People by Steven Ozment is a very short book. Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915) required some 6,000 pages in twelve volumes to cover the subject, and he had no twentieth century to master. Ozment's book is readable. It moves along in the athletic style and at the brisk pace we expect from him and is largely free of the sarcasms that pepper some of his earlier (though not the earliest) writings. The most surprising thing about A Mighty Fortress is that it was written at all. Why no German historian would tackle the subject today needs no explanation, but it is truly curious that a foreigner would essay the task. Yet Ozment has done just that. The product is a book easy and fun to read, in many respects better entertainment than history. A Mighty Fortress' point of view is so obstinately personal, its attitude toward established scholarship so brusque, and its narrative so broken and at times opaque, that only generous quotations can supply a fair impression of the book.
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