The Cambridge Companion to Modern Culture

“On 10 May 1933, the Association of German Students staged the burning of more than 20,000 books in the square in front of Berlin’s opera house.” With this chilling opener we are led by the editors into Germany’s “divided culture”: traditionalism versus modernism, Kultur versus Zivilisation (which are not the same as culture and civilisation), Geist versus Macht (intellectual and spiritual versus power and political control), culture versus state, modern versus anti‐modern cultures, and so on. These analyses are indicative of the serious and thoughtful nature of this book. Not that this is any sense high falutin’ or intellectually inaccessible,...