Ben's review
Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police by John O. Koehler
I so wanted to give this one a better rating. It's one of my wife's favorite books, mainly because she's from East Germany and she is fascinated by the communist history of the country. She was a child when the wall came down but she's heard stories from friends and family about what it was like. So she loves books about her own personal history. I read it on her recommendation. As a book, I found it not very well written. The "history" is more a series of anecdotes about how they caught this spy, how this spy got away, how they treated this dissident, how this case against terrorists was handled, etc. There is basically no narrative; it's almost like a series of related articles, each just a few paragraphs to a few pages long. I would recommend that if you really want to learn about the Stasi, you read a different book, one that gives a historical narrative with timelines and everything. This book is more like a supplement, used to fill in some of the interesting de...more
