Reckoning with the unbearable burden of the past: Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942–2022, by Frank Trentmann, New York, Knopf, 2024

Furnished with 33 praises, from the New Yorker to the Frankfurter Rundschau, Out of Darkness: The Germans, 1942–2022 is divided into four parts: “The German War and its Legacies 1942 to the 1960s”; “One Nation, Two States 1949 to 1989”; “After the Wall 1989 to 2022”; and “Trying to be Good 1950s to the Present.” Frank Trentmann’s rather sweeping historical overview of Germany begins with what has become in recent times a truism: “Awareness of the Holocaustis as important as ever”.