Traces the five-hundred year history and wide-ranging influence of the Roman historian's unflattering book about the ancient Germans that was eventually extolled by the Nazis as a bible.

Undeniably one of Rome's most important historians, Tacitus was also one of its most gifted. Ideal for college students, this newly revised edition of two seminal works on Imperial Rome is now available.

A reprint of the University of Oklahoma Press edition of 1991 Eminent scholar and translator, Herbert W. Benario, provides a faithful, readable translation of these works, introductory essays, chapter summaries, and notes. A bibliography, maps, and an index are included.

A UNIQUE EXPLORATION OF GERMAN CULTURE, FROM SAUSAGE ADVERTISEMENTS TO WAGNER Sitting on a bench at a communal table in a restaurant in Regensburg, his plate loaded with disturbing amounts of bratwurst and sauerkraut made golden by candlelight shining through a massive glass of beer, Simon Winder was happily swinging his legs when a couple from Rottweil politely but awkwardly asked: "So: why are you here?" This book is an attempt to answer that question. Why spend time wandering around a country that remains a sort of dead zone for many foreigners, surrounded as it is by a force field of historical, linguistic, climatic, and gastronomic barriers? Winder's book is propelled by a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that, since 1945, so many Germans have worked to rebuild. Germania is a very funny book on serious topics—how we are misled by history, how we twist history, and how sometimes it is best to know no history at all. It is a book full of curiosities: odd food, castles, mad princes, fairy tales, and horse-mating videos. It is about the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape.

This incredible history was written by the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus around 98 AD. It is a well-written historical and ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire. The writer brilliantly describes the Germanic people's lands, laws, and customs. In addition, it tells about individuals, beginning with those living closest to Roman lands and ending on the shores of the Baltic.