Fascinating, masterful ... The breadth of Rady's coverage is as impressive as it is eclectic, with gems scattered throughout the book.

This is a very impressive book, quirkily original but also scholarly and authoritative, to be read for pleasure and serious reflection, whether in a beer hall in Prague or a pastry shop in Vienna - or a bomb shelter in Kyiv.

A brilliantly suggestive account of central Europe from Attila to Zizek. The Middle Kingdoms is a masterly synthesis.

Thrilling and eye-opening. From neolithic diseases to Covid-19, Jonathan Kennedy explores the enormous role played by some of the tiniest life on Earth: the power of plagues in shaping world history.

From the fall of Rome to the Spanish conquest of the Americas to the industrial revolution, germs have played as much a role in history as guns, generals and "great men"... Jonathan Kennedy restores the microbes of infectious disease to their rightful place in the story of human evolution and the rise and fall of civilisations. Science and history at its best.

Kennedy's book, which aims to show how infectious disease has shaped us from the time of the Neanderthals to the era of Covid-19, is full of amazing facts... Pathogenesis doesn't only cover thousands of years of history - it seeks radically to alter the way the reader views many of the (often very well-known) events it describes.

Professor Kennedy-drawing on the latest research in fields ranging from genetics and anthropology to archaeology and economics-explores eight major outbreaks of infectious disease across the entire history of civilization... It's not often you pick up a book that promises to alter your entire understanding of the story of humanity.

An absorbing book... Kennedy's intertwined story of humanity and humongous disease is told lucidly and knowledgeably, with ample historical context.

How a virus might have written human history. This is a fascinating, readable, and superbly researched account of how infectious diseases have shaped our history, from the Palaeolithic Era to Covid.

Our very existence and success as a species, Kennedy argues in this fascinating book, has been shaped by bacteria and viruses.

I love this surprising, learned, fascinating book which brings human arrogance into sharp relief, reminding us that the real masters of the universe are microbes. Jonathan Kennedy travels through history, unpicking everything we thought we knew; we are but the pawns and playthings of viruses and bacteria. Mind-blowing.

Well-timed ... compelling ... hopeful ... Yes, our trajectory is defined by microbes. But it's also influenced by our reactions to them - and our acknowledgment of their power.

A compelling account of the role of bacteria and viruses in world history. Dr Kennedy marshals a dizzying range of material, from the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe to the rise of the slave trade to the defeat of the British army by American revolutionaries in Yorktown in 1781... an entertaining read.

New and timely... His book is full of surprises... At this moment of reckoning over humankind's planetary footprint, Pathogenesis offers a humbling reminder that history is made not by the great and the good, but those who survive.

What has shaped the world? Not gods, not heroes, not even conquistadors, but germs... fascinating... We must collaborate... It's up to us.

Jonathan Kennedy’s excellent book details how germs have been laying waste to varied civilisations since Homo sapiens became dominant some 50,000 years ago... Kennedy has a fluent and engaging style. He showcases his interdisciplinary training over 300 pages that take in vast swathes of history.

Kennedy is right to state that pandemics and plague outbreaks have had a big influence throughout human history. Such dramatic episodes get written up by historians, and Kennedy describes their accounts with verve.

Gripping . . . [Kennedy] wrangles an astonishing breadth of material into easily accessible, plain prose. . . . Even readers familiar with the material will find [Pathogenesis] fascinating. . . . Kennedy will leave readers galvanized by the time they flip to the last page, having assured us that we could win the narrative back from germs - if we're able to muster the political will to do so.

it's refreshing to see a first-time writer take aim at what he sees as the failings of two of the best-read popular history titles of the past 30 years... The book shines when it brings cutting-edge science to bear... something that Kennedy treats with great care... germs feel powerfully alive and at work in history... Pathogenesis shows a microbial world that is as complex, dynamic, and alive as the human one, and just as consequential.

Three hundred-odd pages roam through 50,000 years, and by the last it's almost impossible to disagree that infectious diseases are our permanent companion and ultimate adversary... The fluency of Kennedy's narration is remarkable, weaving Tolkien, Game of Thrones and Monty Python into memorable and accessible explanations of genetics, evolutionary biology and demography... Pathogenesis is a humbling story for humankind.

With Beyond the Wall, Katja Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. On the heels of her superb Blood and Iron, about the rise and fall of the Second Reich, comes another masterpiece, this one about the aftermath of the Third Reich in the East. Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, it explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany

Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe

A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder