The Kaiser's Voters is a study of the thirteen general elections held in Germany between 1871 and the outbreak of the First World War. Using advanced mathematical methods, but presenting the results in simple, nontechnical language, the author develops a new interpretation of the electoral politics of the German Empire, demonstrates their implications for the post-1914 era (including the rise of the Nazis) and compares voting trends in Germany with those in other countries of Europe and North America.

Jonathan Sperber has updated and expanded his study of the European Revolutions between 1848-1851 in this second edition. Emphasizing the socioeconomic background to the revolutions, and the diversity of political opinions and experiences of participants, Sperber offers an inclusive narrative of the revolutionary events and a structural analysis of the reasons for the revolutions' ultimate failure. A wide-reaching conclusion and a detailed bibliography make his book ideal for classroom use and the general reader wishing a better knowledge of a major historical event.

This major interpretation of the Revolution of 1848-1849 in Germany stresses its character as a mass political phenomenon. Building skillfully on the theme of the interaction of self-conscious radicalism and spontaneous popular movements, Jonathan Sperber analyzes the social and religious antagonisms of pre-1848 German society and shows how they were politicized by the democratic political opposition.

The Kaiser's Voters is a study of the thirteen general elections held in Germany between 1871 and the outbreak of the First World War. Using advanced mathematical methods, but presenting the results in simple, nontechnical language, the author develops a new interpretation of the electoral politics of the German Empire, demonstrates their implications for the post-1914 era (including the rise of the Nazis) and compares voting trends in Germany with those in other countries of Europe and North America.

Historians have often employed the concept of civil society, an intermediary realm between the family and the state, to analyse nineteenth-century Europe and North America. They have concentrated on voluntary associations, the press and public meetings, the constituent elements of Jurgen Habermas's 'public sphere', in doing so overlooking a central element of nineteenth-century civil society: property and its disposition, whether within the family or in the marketplace.
This book examines the place of property in the society of south-western Germany during property's nineteenth-century...

In this magisterial biography of Karl Marx, likely to be definitive for many years to come (John Gray, New York Review of Books), historian Jonathan Sperber creates a meticulously researched and multilayered portrait of both the man and the revolutionary times in which he lived. Based on unprecedented access to the recently opened archives of Marx s and Engels s complete writings, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life provides a historical context for the personal story of one of the most influential and controversial political philosophers in Western history. By removing Marx from the...