Books
Books written by fellows of the American Academy in Berlin—works of history, fiction, poetry, philosophy, and more, many of them begun or completed during a semester at the Hans Arnhold Center.
Books Written at the American Academy in Berlin
A selection of titles by our fellows, published during or after their time in Berlin.
Barbara Schmitter Heisler, Lily M. Hoffman
Airbnb, Short-Term Rentals and the Future of Housing Routledge, November 2020 How do Airbnb and short-term rentals affect housing and communities? Locating the origins and success of Airbnb in the conditions wrought by the 2008 financial crisis, Barbara Schmitter Heisler and Lily M. Hoffmann bring together a diverse body of literature and construct case studies…
Barbara Nagel
Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond: Flirtation, Passive Aggression, Domestic Violence Bloomsbury Academic, October 2019 Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond looks at three interlocking forms of social violence–flirtation, passive aggression, and domestic violence. In order to understand their circulation, it traces their literary-historical genealogy in German realism and modernism–in scenes from…
Joshua Yaffa
Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia Tim Duggan Books, January 2020 In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country’s most remarkable figures—from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians—who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow…
Kate Brown
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future W. W. Norton & Company, March 2019 After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, international aid organizations sought to help the victims but were stymied by post-Soviet political roadblocks. Efforts to gain access to the site of catastrophic radiation damage were denied, and the residents…
Becoming a Man
Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition Simon & Schuster, January 2020 Becoming a Man is the memoir of P. Carl’s journey to become the man he always knew himself to be. For fifty years, he lived as a girl and a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet…
Mary Jo Bang
A Doll for Throwing: Poems Graywolf Press, August 2017 A Doll for Throwing takes its title from the Bauhaus artist Alma Siedhoff-Buscher’s Wurfpuppe, a flexible and durable woven doll that, if thrown, would land with grace. A ventriloquist is also said to “throw” her voice into a doll that rests on the knee. Mary Jo…
Hari Kunzru
White Tears Knopf, March 2017 White Tears is a ghost story, a terrifying murder mystery, a timely meditation on race, and a love letter to all the forgotten geniuses of American music and Delta Mississippi Blues. Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America’s great fortunes.…
Elizabeth Goodstein
Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary Stanford University Press, January 2017 An internationally famous philosopher and best-selling author during his lifetime, Georg Simmel has been marginalized in contemporary intellectual and cultural history. This neglect belies his pathbreaking role in revealing the theoretical significance of phenomena—including money, gender, urban life, and technology—that subsequently became established arenas…