mine two aspects of the "German question" first, the historical roots and enduring significance of National Socialism that, eight decades after its collapse, still casts a shadow across Germany's political and moral landscape; second, the problem of German national identity that had apparently been resolved by the formation of the Second Empire in 1871 but reappeared during the era of the Cold War. In addition to these essays on the German question, there are biographies of German historians and American historians of Germany whose lives and work illustrate the interplay of past and present that shapes our historical consciousness.