Germany: A Nation in Its TimeAn epic in the tradition of Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China and Jill Lepore's These Truths, Helmut Walser Smith's sterling work promises to redefine our perception of German history. For nearly a century, conventional historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression, its nineteenth century ascent accompanied by militarism and brought to a murderous apex in the Third Reich. Not so, asserts Smith,