An excellent study of how neoliberalism is causing a crisis in Germany.

One of the German-speaking world's leading young sociologists lays out modern Germany's social and political crisis and its implications for the future of the European hegemon.

Upward social mobility represented a core promise of life under the "old" West German welfare state, in which millions of skilled workers upgraded their VWs to Audis, bought their first homes, and sent their children to university. Not so in today's Federal Republic, however, where the gears of the so-called "elevator society" have long since ground to a halt. In the absence of the social mobility of yesterday, widespread social exhaustion and anxiety have emerged across mainstream society. Oliver Nachtwey analyses the reasons for this social rupture in post-war German society and investigates the conflict potential emerging as a result, concluding that although the country has managed to muddle through the Eurocrisis largely unscathed thus far, simmering tensions beneath the surface nevertheless threaten to undermine the German system's stability in the years to come.

Nachtwey's book was recipient of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's 2016 Hans-Matthöfer-Preis for Economic Writing.

"An insightful account of the crises threatening German stability." - Morning Star

"It would be difficult to find a comparatively accessible, precisely formulated and cogent explanation of the crisis on the German book market today." - Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Critical theory has rarely been more illuminating." - Literatur Spiegel

"The book poses the question of class in a surprising and intelligent way. A well-founded explanation of the present." - Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"Rarely has such a precisely argued, elegantly formulated and resolutely steadfast piece of academic writing on the complex topic of social structure analysis appeared in the German-speaking world." - konkret

"The newest Frankfurt School: Nachtwey investigates how capitalism's liberalization over the last forty years has transformed our lives. Oliver Nachtwey may not have an answer, but he asks the right questions." - hr fernsehen

"Nachtwey's book provides a detailed analysis of postwar developments in Germany from a left-wing, working-class, and sociology-based perspective. I can highly recommend it to everyone interested in the past, present, and future of this crucially important country, many of whose problems face other Europeans and people in the United States as well, in particular the danger of some variant of fascism, most alarmingly in case of a repetition of the 2008 crisis-perhaps a far more serious one." - Monthly Review