In his third collection of poems, Adam Kirsch finds inspiration in the iconic portraits by August Sander, the German photographer whose work chronicled the extreme tensions and transitions of the early twentieth century. Kirsch, one of our foremost intellectuals, sets his accessible poems opposite Sander's images of the men, women, and children--ranging from bricklayers to soldiers to the haute bourgeoisie--of Weimar Germany. Imagining his way into these vanished lives, Kirsch brings us new insight into an era that would serve as an overture to genocide.
