One of the most devastating portraits ever drawn of a human society - life in Hitler's Germany during the Third Reich The Nazis developed a social system unprecedented in history. It was rigidly hierarchical, with the seemingly beneficent and ascetic figure of Hitler at the top - focus for the homage and aspirations of every man, woman and child. How did the 'ordinary citizen' live under such a system? The author discusses such subjects as beauty in the Third Reich (no cosmetics, no slimming) as well as charting how you progressed to the elite Nazi cadres - administrators, propagandists or coercers. It shows childhood with the Hitler Youth and describes the intense medieval ritual injected into every phase of life from school and university to farm labour. It shows life in the office, in industry, in the professions - doctors, lawyers, artists - and in the Nazi Party itself. Finally, it documents what happened at the two extremes of German society - to the aristocrats and to the Jews.

Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.

Volume One of Brecht's Collected Plays contains Brecht's first performed stage works. Baal is inspired by Brecht's student life in Augsburg and follows the life of a young poet on the rocky road to inspiration; Drums in the Night was written in response to Brecht's experience as a medical orderly in the aftermath of the First World War; and In the Jungle of Cities, set in Chicago, covers the downfall of a family that has moved from the prairies to the jungle of the big city - award-winning in its day, it was described by a leading German daily as the play that 'has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision'.

This volume also includes The Life of Edward II of England, a ballad-like adaptation of Marlowe's original, and five one-act plays The Beggar or the Dead Dog, Driving Out The Devil, Lux in Tenebris, The Catch and A Respectable Wedding in which the bourgeois proceedings take a hilarious turn for the unseemly.

The translators are Jean Benedetti, Eva Geiser and Ernest Borneman, Richard Grunberger, Michael Hamburger, Gerhard Nellhaus, Peter Tegel and John Willett. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.

How did people talk during the Third Reich? What films could they see? What political jokes did they tell? Did Nazi ranting about the role of women (no make-up, smoking, or dieting) correspond with reality? What was the effect of the regime on family life (where fathers were encouraged to inform on sons, and children on parents)? When the country embraced National Socialism in 1933, how did that acceptance impact the churches, the civil service, farmers, housewives, businessmen, health care, sports, education, "justice," the army, the arts, and the Jews? Using examples that range from the horrifying to the absurd, Grunberger captures vividly the nightmarish texture of the times and reveals how Nazis effectively permeated the everyday lives of German citizens. The result is a brilliant, terrifying glimpse of the people who dwelt along the edges of an abyss,often disappearing into it.