The Origins of the Scottish Reformation Book

Three stars because this is the second edition, published in 1989, and there's been much intervening scholarship. (Also Germany has been reunited, obviating the need to speak of West German historians vs. East German historians.) This is a dense (though not terribly long) work of Third Reich historiography, not history, so I wouldn't recommend it to a casual history reader unless they really want to know about the Historikerstreit, for example. Kershaw examines some of the ways historians look at the Third Reich: is it a form of fascism, a brand of totalitarianism, or a unique phenomenon? (That's one chapter heading.) Was Hitler the master of the Third Reich, or a weak dictator? (That's another.) Was Nazi foreign policy fully intentional, or more hapless? Ought we to look at the Holocaust as something situated in history, or something so awful that historiography can't properly explain it and we need to resort to moral terminology? All of these things historians of the Third Reich have had to grapple with, and still do more than two decades after the book's publication.

I intend to take up many of Kershaw's suggestions for further reading. Even though they're 24 years old.