Meh. The prose is beautiful, but I found myself yawning and sleeping through the book.

Keeping straight the myriad of examples in this book can be challenging. However, that's not why it garnered 3 stars. It earned three stars for it's threads that aren't satisfactorily woven in by the end.
Fantastic resource for anyone doing cultural history on the GDR post-reunification though!

I truly enjoyed Rodden's book. I knocked a star for the confusion in switching between 1945 and 1990 in the initial few chapters. Otherwise, it was incredibly useful for my Master's thesis and I'm very happy I stumbled across it.

The bias in this book is incredible. Estep shows that he truly does not like Catholics and he wants to have babies with Anabaptists. My professor thought this would be a good book but eventually decided he could never use it again because of the blatant bias that runs throughout.