A most dangerous book : Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-285) and index.

Traces the five-hundred year history and wide-ranging influence of the Roman historian's unflattering book about the ancient Germans that was eventually extolled by the Nazis as a bible.

When, at the height of the Roman Empire, the historian Tacitus wrote the Germania, a none-too-flattering book about the German tribes, he could not have foreseen that centuries later it would be distorted into claiming Germanic superiority and, ultimately, become the perfect vehicle for Nazi ideology. But the Germania inspired-and polarized-readers long before the rise of the Third Reich. In this elegant and captivating history, Christopher B. Krebs, a professor of classics at Harvard University, traces the wide-ranging influence of the Germania, revealing how an ancient text rose to take its place among the most dangerous books in the world. -- from Book Jacket.