German unification was expected to be a triumph of the human spirit, of political resourcefulness, and of economic power. Instead, the process that began in late 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, has turned into an unending chronicle of division rather than unification, and of economic bust rather than boom--a story of lost opportunities, of misjudgments, of human alienation, of misspent money, of cultural arrogance, of unfulfilled promises.
In "Ghost Strasse," author and journalist Simon Burnett breathes life into the East German people, into their politics, and into the events that brought them to the present situation.