The recommendation list with the greatest distribution in the German-speaking area appears here every month. Media partners are “Literarische Welt”, “NZZ”, RBB Kultur and Radio Österreich 1. Experts choose ten non-fiction books of the month from the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences and economics. Worthwhile in September:
“Service operations are not disrupted”. The Germans and their judiciary 1943 – 1948. C. H. Beck, 384 pages, 34 euros.
Bombing war, capitulation and Allied occupation were hardly disruptive factors for the German judiciary: German court proceedings before and after 1945 simply continued, with the same actors, according to the same rules. Legal historian Benjamin Lahusen explains why and how.
Munich 72. A German summer. DVA, 368 pages, 25 euros.
Less than 25 years after its founding, the Federal Republic has hosted the Olympics for the only time so far. In their chronicle, Markus Brauckmann and Gregor Schöllgen recount 17 days of the Olympics. At the same time, they draw the moral picture of a summer – and its shadow that has hung over the “merry games” since the terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes.
At the end of the road. Afghanistan between hope and failure. A report. Suhrkamp, 399 pages, 24 euros.
The Afghan Ring Road is a 2,200-kilometer circular highway that was once intended to connect the country’s major cities. Reporter Wolfgang Bauer explores the fate of Afghanistan since the West left the Ring Road.
Orwell’s roses. Translated by Michaela Grabinger. Rowohlt, 352 pages, 24 euros.
The American essayist reflects on the legacy of colonialism in the world. She follows in the footsteps of the writer George Orwell from India to Spain and she studies the secret of Stalin’s lemons.
The Russia Simulacrum. Brief cultural history of political protest in Russia. Matthes
The Russian exile Irina Rastorgueva has examined the Russian protest culture and recalled: Even Alexei Navalny supported the annexation of Crimea.
On swing around the world. The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds. Translated by Sebastian Vogel. Hanser blue, 400 pages, 26 euros.
Billions of birds circle the globe every year. In this book, ornithologist Scott Weidensaul reveals what we know about the nature of bird flight.
metropolises. The world history of mankind in the cities. Translated by Irmengard Gabler. S. Fischer, 574 pages, 34 euros.
Half of humanity lives in big cities. The historian Ben Wilson describes what characterizes metropolises from prehistory to the present day.
My father’s shoes. DuMont, 192 pages, 22 euros.
A book about fathers and sons and the unexpected ways of grieving: how do you deal with having your father’s life placed in your hands? How to say goodbye when you have to decide when to do it yourself?
Afghanistan from within. How peace was lost. Brandstätter, 374 pages, 25 euros.
Well-known foreign reporter Antonia Rados has been traveling in Afghanistan for more than 40 years. Since the Taliban storm and the West retreated, many have been asking: How did this happen? Rados shows that the debacle began much earlier.
The great beginner feeling. Modernity, zeitgeist, revolution. Suhrkamp, 284 pages, 18 euros.
Smashing conventions, revolutionizing perception, imagining something new – that was the spirit of radical modernity. Misik attempts to characterize the central characteristics of this epoch.
Konrad Paul Liessmann (prof. em. for philosophy at the University of Vienna) recommends:
Thomas Macho: Why we eat animals. Molden Verlag, 128 pages, 22 euros.
“Even the title of this slim, elegant book is astounding: When it comes to questions of nutrition, we usually expect the question of whether we are still allowed to eat animals at all. Thomas Macho simply assumes the fact of increasing global meat consumption and asks why this is so. His answer is as simple as it is amazing: Because we are animals. And some animals feed on other animals. The modern thesis that man is not allowed to claim a special position gains a special point.
With the consideration that humans were not originally the hunters in their evolution, but rather the ones hunted by other animals, and that this has become deeply ingrained in the collective memory, Macho opens up a cultural-historical perspective on the relationship between animals and humans exciting and also extremely instructive. The reflections on fundamental experiences of hunger and fashionable asceticism alone are worth reading.
The essay concludes with the sober, completely unideologically presented note that we have to take many paths in order to achieve a reduction in meat consumption that we should strive for with good reason. The suggestion of only eating those animals that you have killed yourself makes it suddenly clear that we also eat animals because, given the appetizingly prepared pieces of meat in the supermarket, we hardly notice that living beings had to die for them.” (Konrad Paul Liessmann)
Tobias Becker, “Spiegel”; Manon Bischoff, “Spectrum of Science”; Natascha Freundel, RBB Culture; Eike Gebhardt, Berlin; Daniel Haufler, Berlin; Knud von Harbou, publicist, Feldafing; Prof. Jochen Hörisch, University of Mannheim; Günter Kaindlstorfer, Vienna; Otto Kallscheuer, Sassari, Italy; Petra Kammann, “Feuilleton Frankfurt”; Jörg-Dieter Kogel, Bremen; Wilhelm Krull, The New Institute, Hamburg; Marianna Lieder, freelance critic, Berlin; Prof. Herfried Münkler, Humboldt University; Gerlinde Pölsler, “Moth”; Marc Reichwein, WORLD; Thomas Ribi, “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”; Prof. Sandra Richter, German Literature Archive Marbach; Wolfgang Ritschl, ORF; Florian Rötzer, “Great
