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  • Published: 25 October 2005
  • ISBN: 9780143036364
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

Death in Hamburg

Society and Politics in the Cholera Years



"A tremendous book, the biography of a city which charts the multifarious pathways from bacilli to burgomaster." - Roy Porter, London Review of Books

Why were nearly 10,000 people killed in six weeks in Hamburg, while most of Europe was left almost unscathed? As Richard J. Evans explains, it was largely because the town was a “free city” within Germany that was governed by the “English” ideals of laissez-faire. The absence of an effective public-health policy combined with ill-founded medical theories and the miserable living conditions of the poor to create a scene ripe for tragedy. The story of the “cholera years” is, in Richard Evans’s hands, tragically revealing of the age’s social inequalities and governmental pitilessness and incompetence; it also offers disquieting parallels with the world’s public-health landscape today, including the current coronavirus crisis.

  • Published: 25 October 2005
  • ISBN: 9780143036364
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

About the author

Richard J. Evans

Richard J. Evans was born in London in 1947. From 1989 to 1998 he was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Since 1998 he has been Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University.In 1994 he was awarded the Hamburg Medal for Art and Science for cultural services to the city. His books include The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894-1933, Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History), In Hitler's Shadow, Rituals of Retribution (winner of the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History), In Defence of History (which has so far been translated into eight languages) and Telling Lies about Hitler.

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Praise for Death in Hamburg