United City, Divided Memories? focuses on the basic question of how Berlin today deals with three specific Cold War-era legacies: the presence of the four Great Powers, the East German Stasi, and the Berlin Wall. Dirk Verheyen looks at monuments, museums, and memorial sites as illustrations of Berlin's struggle to craft an effective shared identity that ties together its western and eastern halves. Verheyen's comprehensive and critical analysis is considered against the broader background of Germany's efforts at coming to grips with its dual twentieth-century totalitarian past. This book demonstrates that important elements of east-west contrast linger and complicate the city's efforts at crafting a more definitively future-oriented united identity. United City, Divided Memories? will stimulate debate among German studies scholars, as well as among those interested in German history and cultural studies.

"Each topic is very thoroughly documented, weaving together historical information and current political debates surrounding memorial sites....Highly valuable as a chronicle of the politics of memory....Recommended. Two-star review." - CHOICE, March 2009

"Dirk Verheyen has written a fascinating, exhaustive analysis of the evolving and conflicting memories of the Cold War memorialized by the most controversial monuments and museums in Berlin. He is at his best in his demonstration of the ongoing controversies." - Reviews

"Verheyen's book is a useful and welcome history of reunified Germany's troubled capital over the last two decades." - American Historical Review, October 2009