Intend to do everything ... to have one way of evaluating experience--does it cause me pleasure or pain, and I shall be very cautious about rejecting the painful--I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly ... everything matters! So wrote Susan Sontag in May 1949 at the age of sixteen. This, the first of three volumes of her journals and notebooks, presents a constantly and utterly surprising...

"Berlin is an intricate look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens--Marthe Müller, a young woman escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War I, Kurt Severing, an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold; the Brauns, a family torn apart by poverty and politics. Lutes weaves these characters' lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart. The city...