Berlin Now: The City After the Wall

Pleasant enough read but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it.

Having recently read, and loved, Emanuel Litvinoff’s wonderful 'The Lost Europeans’ I wanted to read more about Berlin, a city I have yet to visit despite being interested in it for decades. 'Berlin Now: The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall' by Peter Schneider, published in 2014, is a very readable account of the changes in Berlin since the fall of the wall in 1989. It's an interesting account of a fascinating city that makes me even keener to go and see it for myself.'Berlin Now: T [...]

I read the book Berlin: Portrait of a City Through the Centuries and I really loved the unique way the history of Berlin was addressed. It also got me on a bit of a Berlin kick. I found myself nostalgic for a city I had lived in for two weeks in the 90s and visited so many other times. I saw this book while researching info found in the Portrait of a City book. I've used some of Peter Schneider's work in my classes and, though I didn't know who he was then, I stumbled upon his book reading in He [...]

Schneider a long time resident of Berlin, reflects on what makes it such a unique city. He delves into the architecture that has evolve with the spliting and reuniting of a city. He explores the night clubs and various neighborhoods. And he talks about remembrance and the power of history, that can weigh down a city. And the challenges of immigration, both from the East to the West and from the Middle East to Europe.Why I started this book: Berlin is a fascinating city, full of history, energy a [...]

Peter Schneider has very little new or original to say about the New Berlin. Here are some quotes: Cinderella Berlinp.7 – Today, half of Berlin’s tourists come from abroad, and their numbers continue to grow every year. Forecasts already predict that the city, which currently counts 25 million overnight visitors, could soon catch up with Paris (37 million overnight visitors), thus making it second only to London.p.8 – Cinderella Berlin offers an inestimable advantage over these princess ci [...]

It took me some time to finish this book, but that is no problem.It is a biography about Berlin and every chapter has is own theme. So you can read it chapter for chapter if you want.It is a great book for everybody who has been to Berlin, a lot of familiar places and their history are in this book. I liked that a lot.I also learned a lot about the history of Berlin, that was nice too.

Eclectic, personal and insightful insight into Berlin.

Premier livre sur Berlin que j'ai eu l'occasion d'avoir entre les mains.Les premiers chapitres légèrement poussifs Après, c'est que du bonheur.Se lit assez rapidement. Très clair.

Wessies won and Ossies lost. It is because of that result that you get biased pieces of work like the book "Berlin now" by Peter Schneider. The author is so utterly convinced of his - Wessie's - rigthness and superiority, that he does not even bother to hide his bias toward the East or to make it more subtle. In fact his technique is straigtforward. All, which has anything to do with East Berlin or GDR, is always labelled as product of dictatorship, regime, propaganda or occupation by the Soviet [...]

I normally read books about cities hoping to learn how cities rise and fall. What makes a city succeed, what makes it falter and fall. A book claiming to look at the sociology of a city in the present does not seem to be much of a lesson on urban planning. However, I found this book to be more enjoyable than many other books looking at cities over time. Schneider has a unique writing style in that he tells stories to illustrate culture. It is a little tiring that he sways between first and secon [...]

Reading this was a wonderful way to extend the pleasures of my recent trip to Berlin. I started with Simon Winder's Germania, which in fact I'd carried with me and read aloud a few pages on specific topics at night to my husband to expand on something we'd seen during the day. My husband exaggerated and called Winder, who is British, a racist because of his comments on Germany. I forebear pointing out he meant to say "nationalist." It doesn't exert the same sort of disapproval. It's true, I wond [...]

I heard about this book from the Sunday NYTimes paper and read it in preparation of my trip to Berlin. It's a collection of essays from a long-time writer and resident of Berlin, purportedly (since it just published) about Berlin NOW.The book starts very strong with essays on various architecture projects in the wake of the Berlin wall. It's fascinating to hear back and forth about the public and political debate behind each development. From tearing down old buildings to make way for new to res [...]

I was looking for a travel book, ie. a book which describes Berlin for those curious about it. This book delivered on that count. It also gave interesting information about how various neighborhoods have changed since the wall came down and the politics surrounding the re-building of the areas formerly occupied by the wall.If you're interested in urban planning and/or architecture, I think you'd really enjoy the chapters on re-development. But there are also chapters on immigration and on the cu [...]

A series of essays whose transitions resemble those of Mr. Show - connected, but not necessarily related. The reunification of Berlin is an unprecedented social experiment, and it's interesting to hear that the residents of each side of the wall have different personalities, that the culture endures to this day. Communist East Berlin has, paradoxically, attracted more of the artist types possibly because of the contradictory nature of such, or perhaps because land is cheaper. I love small detail [...]

In addition to attempting to identify what draws people to Berlin (“the weirdness, perpetual incompleteness, and outlandishness of Berlin – and the liveliness inherent in these qualities.”), Schneider tries to articulate what Berlin is today, as a community, 25 years after reunification. It’s an engrossing book which attempts the practically impossible: describing the essence of what makes Berlin so Berlin. Having been to Berlin many times, both while the Wall existed and after it came d [...]

More like a 3.5 I suppose. I enjoyed the way the author told the history of post-war--and snippets of pre-war--Berlin through anecdotes,people and buildings. As an urbanism nerd I particularly enjoyed the chapters focusing on the way the physical space has shaped society in the city. I sort of wish Schneider had stuck to that because when he strays into his own social commentary it gets a bit weird. For example his insistence that West German men held a predilection for East German women because [...]

I picked this up because I really liked Peter Schneider's novels about divided Berlin, because the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall has gotten a lot of attention recently, and because I'd like to go to Berlin next year and I'm interested to see what's going on. It was an interesting set of anecdotes about various aspects of Berlin (politics, immigrants, sex, clubs and young people, east vs. west) but kind of hard to tell what the overall purpose of writing the book was. Also, the title i [...]

Interesting book, but not what I thought. It gives you a lot of background and context to contemporary Berlin, but it's almost exclusively 80s and early 90s background. I bought the book on the pretext that it would give me a solid understanding of Berlin *right now*, rather than the Berlin just after the Wall came down. I guess Schneider is a product of his generation, and that's fine, it's just this book didn't quite give me what I was looking for. As a newcomer to Berlin, I felt I needed to b [...]

Episodic story of Berlin since 1989 (with some unavoidable discussion of events before that date). Somewhat disjointed, but the same thing could be said of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. The translation from German is sometimes clunky. Definitely worth reading if you are going to be visiting Berlin in the near future. It's definitely one of the most interesting cities in Europe, not always in a good way, but always in a way that invites discussion.

I finished about half of this book before a trip to Berlin. The essays I had read were fascinating and while walking around the city, I was able to point out places I had read about and offer my husband interesting bits of history, context, politics, and trivia. Schneider does an excellent job of describing the culture of the city. I’m only just starting to delve into the unique history of Berlin and this was a great starting point.

I may not be interested in all topics covered in the book but definitely I have learned a lot about Berlin - history, architecture, people and culture. It surely is a unique place. As I don't really know much about Berlin, I kept referring to Wiki to find out more and it took me some time to finish reading it! If the book included photos of places and people it talks about, it would be a lot more reader-friendly.

The most fascinating this about this book is how someone could make a book about Berlin - which is the most wonderful and interesting city - so dull. Pointless prose, leading nowhere, musings with nothing attaching them to paragraphs before or after. When it got to the paragraph beginning 'And what had become of the pigeon plague?' out of nowhere, I was done. Fortunately, that was the second last page of this book. Disappointing.

Schneider writes in a readable style but the book as a whole reads more like a compilation of magazine articles. There isn't much coherence to the chapters. It is more like a series of vignettes. Some interesting information, though. Clearly I didn't go to the right night spots on my visit to Berlin. A good reason to go back!

Very detailed personal account of Berlin. Some of went right over my head but it's nice to read an insider's account. The experience of being in Berlin post wall however is fascinating, things don't seem to have changed as much as expected.

I thought the essays were well written with lots of interesting information. The themes of each chapter segued well into the next. But it would have been helpful if they had included some maps or pictures of the places he was writing about.

Amazing readIncredible overview of the history, culture, architecture and people of Berlin. Should absolutely be on more pre-travel reading lists. Author has a great voice and organized the book in a way that allows the reader to select chapters/topics of interest.

Great book on the modern history of Berlin. Reads like a textbook in some parts, but the author also injects his personal experiences into it so that it doesn't get too boring. Recommended if you plan to travel to Berlin soon or if you love the city.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in post-reunification Germany, particularly Berlin. Berlin is a favorite city of mine, so I was drawn into the idea of the book. Yet, I learned so much. Great, great read.

Totally just written for an American audience

Made me want to visit Berlin