Body by Weimar

"An important addition to the history of Germany and the history of human actors." --American Historical Review"Erik Jensen has written an excellent book that shows the importance of the body for our understanding of Weimar Germany. Lean, fast, and fit-and competitive-the ideal sportsmen and sportswomen of the 1920s were emblematic of modernity. Each chapter, on tennis, boxing, and track, is replete with insights and splendid illustrations." -Eric D. Weitz, author of Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy"Jensen's study is a cultural history of the discourses of gender, modernity, and modern sports that concentrates on the everyday experience of the mass of Germans who read about athletes in the popular press or in popular fiction, who went to movies that featured them, and who emulated them in their daily routines and fashions. For professional historians, it fills a significant gap. For a more popular audience, it tells a fascinating part of the story of how the world we live in, in which women as well as men routinely compete in sports, and in which Germany routinely dominates Olympic competitions, came into being. It is an entertaining as well as an informative history, in which we can see our own sense of what it means to be modern emerging in the interaction of a rapidly expanding mass media culture and a specifically modern form of athleticism." -Michael Mackenzie, DePauw University