Can a nation be a prisoner of its own history? For half a century, the world has been a divided self, and Germany has been the world in microcosm. But if racial thinking brought the Germans to the brink of national damnation, it must not be invoked in passing judgment on them today. Nations are made up of individuals. All history is biography.

Six extraordinary yet representative individuals have served as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany since its founding in 1949. They have led a people through the Valley of the Shadow - from ruin, division, and despair to prosperity, unity, and renewed national identity. From the perpetual jeopardy of life on the razor's edge, to the stable if dynamic center of a new Europe. Their stories are Germany's story, and Germany's story is the world's.

With the help of over 100 rare photographs, The German Chancellors vividly places these men before the reader in five dramatic biographies and a thought-provoking interview. The authors were carefully selected, each on the basis of a special affinity for or closeness to his subject. Most participated in the events that they now recount.

This intimacy of viewpoint transforms history with novelistic insights and immediacy. It also reinforces an implicit message - that after defeat and division, and seemingly hopeless submersion in the identities and conflicts of others, Germany must now, for better or worse, take hold of its own history once again.