Böcker av David Koehler

David Koehler continues his history of German peasants with this brilliant second volume, the companion to Bakers, Brewers and Bricklayers (2022), which was nominated for a Midwest Book Award. Paupers, Parties and Plagues, written in a vivid non-academic style, shows how this hardy people survived waves of war, plague and famine yet managed to invent the first printing press, oil lamps, iron stoves, the pivoting front cart axle, cuckoo clocks and stagecoaches between 1450 and the mid-19th century. Koehler explains why the Industrial Revolution arrived late in German-speaking lands, and shows how the revolution of 1848, known as the "turning point when Germany did not turn", left Germans at a poverty equal to today's Sub-Saharan Africa. The religious upheaval of the Thirty Years' War played out mostly on German soil, leaving the German-speaking world destitute and divided, which eventually leads to a mass exodus, beginning in 1820, when millions escaped poverty and despotism for freedom and food in the Americas.

This is the story of how the author's German ancestors coped with life since the time of Julius Caesar. Why was so much of the Germany we know today never absorbed into the Roman Empire while much of Europe was? The book answers intimate questions about how Germans lived; everyday things like how they heated their houses and what they wore to bed (if anything) in the so-called "Dark Ages" of the sixth century. When did Germans start brewing beer? How were such a stubborn people converted to Christianity and then large proportions of them to Lutheranism? There are several charming surprises, including the radical changes that resulted in their lives when they rediscovered how to make bricks and what became a staple part of every meal. Many Americans have German family names; here, you will find out how those names were chosen. Enjoy a delightful historical discovery read along the lines of what we might expect from authors like Bill Bryson.