John Kampfner, Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-up Country

Excerpt

When John Kampfner’s book Why the Germans Do it Better appeared in 2020, it quickly became a bestseller, receiving generally very positive reviews in major British newspapers. The immediate question readers coming to a book with such a seemingly provocative title will ask is: what do they do better? And perhaps also: better than who? Kampfner is not short on answers to either question. Reaching the end of the book, this reader felt that Kampfner had convinced him the Germans are better at pretty much everything. Not that Kampfner spares with criticism where it is needed. But this is a book warmly suffused with admiration and praise for Britain’s continental neighbour, and that warmth generates a clarity and humanity in Kampfner’s writing that makes his book a genuine pleasure to read. The answer to the second question, perhaps predictably, is that the Germans do things better than any other nation. …