Abstract
In her eminently readable book the Tel Aviv-based historian Shulamit Volkov, whose previous publications include the acclaimed Germans, Jews, and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation (2006, Cambridge University Press) presents a nuanced account of this fascinating business executive turned essayist turned politician who had reached the height of his career when he became the Weimar Republic's foreign minister in January 1922, less than half a year before he was shot dead by right-wing extremists while driving through Berlin. [...]she confirms the press reports that dubbed him "the most paradoxical living creature of old Germany" (179).