Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2018
384 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
Rollicking, cinematic, deeply researched, highly readable, and thrillingly topical, Burning Down the Haus brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time—and is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of resistance.
SAY IT, SPEAK IT, SHOUT IT OUT LOUD!
It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin in 1980, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery. The buzz-saw guitars, the messed-up clothing and hair, the rejection of society and the DIY approach to building a new one: In their gray surroundings, where everyone's future was preordained by some communist apparatchik, punk represented a revolutionary philosophy—quite literally, as it turned out.
But as the East German punks became more numerous, more visible, and more rebellious, security forces—including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi—targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. Instead of backing down, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall.
The story of East German punk rock is about much more than music; it is a story of extraordinary bravery in the face of one of the most oppressive regimes in history.
"Starred Review. Lively ... compelling ... a front-row seat to the events of the '80s. This take on punk evolution is engaging, enlightening, and well worth checking out." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Translator, editor, and former Berlin DJ Mohr energetically details the origins of East German punks ... Mohr tells a frantic and exciting true story of music versus dictatorship, and the infamous wall it helped bring down." - Booklist
"An appealing, lively cultural history worth reading in an era of corporate punk nostalgia." - Kirkus Reviews
"A wonderful book." - Berliner Zeitung (Germany)
"A historical drama that takes your breath away." - Neustadt-Gefluester (Germany)
"Mohr digs into the subject of East German punk like nobody before." - Rolling Stone (Germany)
"Cinematic... Makes the reader feel a witness to the events... A lively, enthralling adventure story; the tone combines a dramatic Hollywood epic with a meticulous documentary." - Falter (Austria)
"Burning Down the Haus is not just an immersion into the punk rock scene of East Berlin, it's the story of the cultural and political battles that have shaped the world we live in today." - DW Gibson, author of The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century
"Tim Mohr tells the story of their DIY revolution with the thoroughness of a historian and the panache of a cultural insider. Burning Down the Haus is a riveting cultural history that also serves as a rallying call against authoritarianism everywhere." - Ruth Franklin, author of the NBCC Award-winning Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
"Equal parts terrifying and exhilarating...Mohr ties the fearless music-driven resistance to authoritarianism and mass surveillance in the 1980s to our current fraught times, showing how even the most formidable forms of oppression can be shaken by highly motivated, creative kids with riotous rage and a driving beat. A thrilling, inspiring read." - Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House and author of All Tomorrow's Parties
"Spellbinding... With a sharp eye for the prosaic brutality of the repressive state and an ear locked on the furies in the music, Mohr has crafted an unforgettable story that is part cultural history, part political thriller and entirely true." - Peter Ames Carlin, author of Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon
"Berlin has always been a crazy city, and a dramatic stage for the epic struggle between powerful ideological forces and the individual desire to be free. In case you weren't sure just how political music, fashion, and a certain attitude can be: read this book. Burning Down the Haus is wonderful." - Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed
"This is a crazily inspiring, strange, beautiful story that deserves to be remembered, and Mohr is a wonderfully compassionate writer. What a combination!" - Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections
"The best punk book since Please Kill Me." - Legs McNeil, author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
"Tim Mohr's book details a fascinating period of time in the history of punk music. I am so glad he documented that moment in history for punk rock and for the world." - Greg Graffin, singer/songwriter for Bad Religion and author of Population Wars and Anarchy Evolution
"The true story of how teenage kicks turned into political opposition. With meticulous research and impassioned prose, Tim Mohr brings to life the saga of a bunch of East German punk rock kids who broke the state that wanted to break them. A book to warm an old punk's heart." - Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble
This information about Burning Down the Haus was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tim Mohr is an award-winning translator of authors, including Alina Bronsky, Wolfgang Herrndorf, and Charlotte Roche. He has also collaborated on memoirs by musicians Gil Scott-Heron, Duff McKagan of Guns n' Roses, and Paul Stanley of KISS. His own writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine,and Inked, among other publications, and he spent several years as a staff editor at Playboy magazine, where he edited Hunter S. Thompson, John Dean, and Harvey Pekar, among others. Prior to starting his writing career he earned his living as a club DJ in Berlin.
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