The Weimar Republic is a byword for hedonism and excess. A new history captures the mood with gusto … For obvious reasons most histories of the Weimar years are dominated by politics, with Hitler and his cronies lurking ominously on the margins. But Jähner’s account is more unconventional, more surprising and, frankly, more enjoyable … I enjoyed it enormously.

Harald Jähner’s vivid history depicts Germany’s dizzying era of change — and its catastrophic finale … Vertigo presents not a chronicle of events but a tapestry of mass emotions … Jähner’s approach not only carries a heavy cultural spin but puts the politics of collective feeling — from exhilaration to despair — centre stage … Vertigo draws well on the brilliant reporters and commentators of a time when journalism — as practised by giants such as Kurt Tucholsky or Joseph Roth — enjoyed a ‘stylistic and perceptive heyday’Jähner benefits hugely from Shaun Whiteside’s swift and agile translation, always alert to the edgy, crackling modernity of Weimar prose.

Polarised, gullible, narcissistic, wild: does this picture of society sound familiar? Jähner surveys the brief life of the Weimar Republic, in all its Charleston-dancing, free-loving, money-burning madness, and hints at eerie parallels with the West today.

From women in the workplace to traffic lights, from yo-yos to dance culture, Jähner tracks the 15 chaotic years of the Weimar Republic with his characteristic verve and attention to detail. This is one of the most gripping accounts of an era spanning war defeat, humiliation and failed revolution in 1918 to the violence, intimidation and propaganda of the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933. It contains many lessons for the world now.

Vertigo is outstanding. Harald Jähner’s gift for illuminating the big picture with telling detail gives the reader an uncanny sense of what it was actually like to be present in Germany during the Weimar Republic. This is history at its very best.

Wonderfully written and compulsively, electrifyingly readable. The Weimar Republic and its chilling fall is – like Shakespearean tragedy – an enduringly fascinating, profoundly human story. And with consummate skill and a rich breadth of research, Harald Jähner makes us look again at what we thought we knew and gives this history new, extraordinary depth. Taking us through the neurotic violence of the 1918 German revolution, and the neon flowering of Weimar art and culture, thence to the dark rise of Hitler, Jähner deftly overturns many old assumptions about economics and politics along the way. And against this backdrop, he also invites us to explore everything from nude gymnastics to modernist architecture, fast cars to dance halls and, fundamentally, love and loss and the cold horror of hate.

Any decent centrist will shiver at this wonderfully illustrated account of how Weimar’s heady metropolitan progressiveness failed to cope with loss of national pride, technological modernism, social change, early globalisation and financial crash. The confidence of the middle classes was lost, readying them to accept wild conspiracy theories: a new fusion of hard left and hard right, National Socialism, was swept to power by Germany’s flyover country, with disastrous results which the traditional elites only saw too late. A priceless lesson for anybody interested in Germany then – or the world today.

An outstanding cultural history . . . A gripping account of a nation’s experiment in democracy