Been on a German diet recently
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Marie Remarque
I've read this a few times, as it was an important source in my Bachelor's thesis, but this is my first time going through it in the original language.
@The Ozzman I'd recommend you check this out, given your interest in books on war. It's quite moving, so much so the Nazis were compelled to burn it. Jokes aside, I'd say it's worth your time.
Forms of Forgetting - Aleida Assmann
Solid overview on recent theory regarding memory studies, of which her and her husband have contributed to significantly in recent memory (see canon v. archive). Assmann is also quite a straight-forward and easy-to-comprehend writer, which is refreshing after spending the last few weeks on Kant and Hegel in German. I'd imagine an English translation of this will be published at some point, as the Assmann's have gotten quite a lot of attention recently,
Society in Descent: On Revolt in Age of Regressive Modernity (Tricky to translate) - Oliver Nachtwey
Picked this up today as I've read an essay from the author in a collection once that I quite enjoyed. The translation there is bad too, from "
Entzivilerizierung" to "Decivilization," which is crap imo--much better would be "The Process of Decivilization." Anyways, the title here strikes me more as hype than a reflection of the book, just based on a quick perusal. Most of the book is quite in the vain of Piketty, with an emphasis on rising inequality. There's one concept I love in this work, regressive modernization, which essentially holds that unchecked modernization turns instead to impovershment. Not a new phenomenon by any means, but I like the wide applicability of the term. As for the part on revolt, it's maybe a fifth of the work, and covers the protest movement across the West since the Great Recession.