These essays analyze how German and American views of each other developed and periodically shifted, providing a fresh analysis of the often complex German-American relationship. The images--found in travelogues, private letters, diaries, diplomatic reports, newspaper articles, and movies--that resulted from each encounter frequently reflected the contemporary relations, often foreshadowed future trends, and illustrate how political agendas, prejudices, stereotypes, and pragmatic forces influenced each society's perceptions.

This is the first full-scale study in English of the reign of Frederick William IV, King of Prussia from 1840 to 1861, and arguably the most important German monarch in the century between the death of Frederick the Great and the accession of William II. Dismissed by others as a Romantic reactionary, Frederick William comes through in this study as a modern and 'successful' monarch.
Not strictly a biography, the book also focuses on the structures, institutions, and transformations of the Prussian monarchial system during a time of revolutionary change. Through his analysis of the...