In and Around Berlin

An American woman arrives in Berlin on a raw November morning, and what she finds is not the Prussia of military parades and Kaiser Wilhelm, but something more intimate and strange. Minerva Brace Norton recorded her observations of the Prussian capital with an outsider's keen eye and a traveler's delight in the unfamiliar. She navigates language barriers and domestic arrangements that puzzle her American sensibilities, draws sharp parallels between Berlin's broad avenues and her native New York, and catalogs the customs that make daily life in this militarized city so different from home. What emerges is a portrait of a city at once foreign and familiar, seen through the eyes of a woman determined to understand, and occasionally despair of, the German way of life. For readers who love Victorian travel writing and the intimate details of how Americans perceived Europe at the height of its imperial power.