Das Capital

Why is Berlin no longer the "center of the world," as this fine book’s subtitle has it? McKay has a consoling answer wrapped into another question: "History never ends," he avers in his concluding paragraph and "who might guess what form the next … Berlin will take?" Add: Can it return to its former grandeur, or will it continue to play second fiddle to New York, Paris, and London? "I never make predictions, least of all about the future," runs a Yogi Berra malapropism. So, set aside the missing pieces because there is another book waiting to be written by the author—about post-Wall Berlin, the capital of Germany’s first rooted democracy that has outlived Wilhelm, Weimar, and Adolf. Not bad, given its poisoned past.