7x, Conradt, David, The German Polity, 7th Edition*\ Updated through the 1999-2000 CDU party finance scandal, the Seventh Edition of this classic book offers a comprehensive yet concise introduction to modern German politics. The book emphasizes the structural and attitudinal changes that have taken place over the past half-century, as well as the policy problems facing the unified political system. Germany's expanding international role, its increasing integration into a unifying Europe and the problems associated with the return to Berlin are carefully described and analyzed. For those interested in modern German politics.
I think the fact that this book took me nearly a YEAR to read summarises how dense yet perfect Conradt's German Polity was.
The German Polity is an extremely in-depth guide into Germany's political system - both historical and modern; East and West; local and federal - and to such immense detail with a consistent variety of statistics and analyses throughout that makes me wonder whether anyone who reads this and learns everything there is in this book could be entitled to a German politics degree.
Absolutely remarkable. I can't describe how perfect this book was - and I found myself taking pictures of countless (perhaps 10% of the) pages since they were so informative and well-written. You can't let its thickness fool you - it looks like a read that'll take you a few days at most but I quickly found that this would take me a good few months - since it's both detailed and the font size is quite small so the reader is quite easily tricked into picking it up.
I intend to write to David P. Conradt, thanking him for writing such a remarkable guide to The German Polity. I cannot possibly ask him to provide a new volume (i.e. to include the past 22-23 or so years) but if he publishes one, I will be the first in line to read it - even if it takes me another year.