This history of German-speaking central Europe offers a very wide perspective, emphasizing a succession of many-layered communal identities. It highlights the interplay of individual, society, culture and political power, contrasting German with Western patterns. Rather than treating `the Germans` as a collective whole whose national history amounts to a cumulative biography, the book presents the pre-modern era of the Holy Roman Empire; the nineteenth century; the 1914–1945 era of war, dictatorship and genocide; and the Cold War and post-Cold War eras since 1945 as successive worlds of German life, thought and mentality. This book`s `Germany` is polycentric and multicultural, including the multinational Austrian Habsburg Empire and the German Jews. Its approach to National Socialism offers a conceptually new understanding of the Holocaust. The book`s numerous illustrations reveal German self-presentations and styles of life, which often contrast with Western ideas of Germany.