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First published in 1981, this reissue examines mankind's preoccupation with death and mortality by isolating various societies in different periods of time. The authors examine not only the formal rituals associated with the last rite of passage, but also the social attitudes to death and dying which these rituals evidence. The essays establish that different periods do seem to be characterized by different images of death and attitudes to it, but the authors wisely avoid trying to impose strict chronological pattern. A pioneering work in the historical study of attitudes to death, this reissu

Helmuth Plessner's The Delayed Nation was a key text in the Sonderweg narrative that dominated the writing of German history from the later 1950s to the mid-1980s: the idea that the disaster of the Third Reich and the Holocaust could be explained in terms of Germany's problematic path to modernity since the Middle Ages. The book had originally been published under a rather prolix title in Zurich in 1935 when Plessner was an émigré in the Netherlands. It made little impact then, and only attracted attention from 1959 under a short title which seemed to capture the essence of the emerging left-liberal view of the disastrous course of German history. The more accessible title in reality masked an extremely complex book which did not sit easily with the social history preoccupations of the avant-garde of post-war German historians. Plessner's history was a narrative of intellectual degeneration that placed philosophy at the heart of the German problem. Plessner's book can only be fully understand in relation to his own philosophical and political concerns in the 1920s. Its impact in the 1960s and after derives almost entirely from its suggestive and eye-catching title.

Central European History (CEH) began to appear at a crucial juncture in the historiography of the Holy Roman Empire. Of course its remit was much broader. Founded sixteen years before the British journal German History, Central European History, together with the Austrian History Yearbook (founded in 1965) and the East European Quarterly (founded in 1967), took over the role occupied between 1941 and 1964 by the Journal of Central European Affairs. Each of these US journals shared an openness to new approaches and to work on all periods since the Middle Ages, as well as a desire—in the words of CEH's inaugural editor, Douglas Unfug—to keep "readers abreast of new literature in the field …," with "reflective, critical reviews or review articles dealing with works of central importance … [and] bibliographical articles dealing with limited periods or themes…"