Book Review: Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Learning from the Germans. Race and the Memory of Evil examines German efforts to atone for Nazi atrocities and identifies lessons on how the United States might come to terms with its legacy of slavery and racism. Divided into three parts (German lessons, Southern discomfort, and Setting things straight), the book brings together historical and philosophical analysis; interviews with politicians, activists, and contemporary witnesses in Germany and the United States; and Neiman's own first-person observations as a white woman growing up in the South and a Jewish woman who has lived for almost three decades in Berlin.