To account for the rise and tumultuous extinction of Prussia is to explain how contemporary Europe came to assume its current form. A result is an illuminating, profoundly satisfying work of history, brightened by vivid character sketches of the principals in his drama. Clark, who gently but insistently exposes the flaws in most of the received wisdom about his subject.
Prussia, a self-invented artifact right down to its name, demands the kind of careful demythologizing that it receives from Mr. A lively writer, he organizes masses of material in orderly fashion, clearly establishing his main themes and pausing at crucial junctures to recapitulate and reconsider.
Clark, a senior lecturer in modern European history at Cambridge University, does an exemplary job. This too was Prussia―a tormented kingdom that, like a tragic hero, was brought down by the very qualities that raised it up. Prussia and its army were inseparable, but Prussia was also renowned for its efficient, incorruptible civil service its innovative system of social services its religious tolerance and its unrivaled education system, a model for the rest of Germany and the world. Iron Kingdom, Christopher Clark’s stately, authoritative history of Prussia from its humble beginnings to its ignominious end, presents a much more complicated and compelling picture of the German state, which is too often reduced to a caricature of spiked helmets and polished boots. Clark’s immensely learned, judicious, and entertaining book provides a definitive general narrative of its subject for our times. Enthralling, shrewd, and sparkling narrative.
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