"In Berlin, Large argues that in the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent - though often disastrous - role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation - one of the great cultural meccas of our time. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years." "Large's sweeping narrative is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex, despite its standing as a major European metropolis; a distrust amongst many ordinary Germans and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals and the young; a heterogeneity that transformed the once sleepy Prussian outpost into a sophisticated metropolis yet also fostered resentment over the resulting wrenching social changes; the opening up of social, economic and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall."--Jacket.