The enthralling story of the German Empire, from its violent rise to its spectacular fall. Before 1871, Germany was not a nation but an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? Could the young European nation build enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France? In a unique study of five decades that shaped the course of modern history, Katya Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its defeat in the First World War, a dramatic tale of national self-discovery that ended, as it started, in blood and iron. AUTHOR: Katja Hoyer is Head of History at the Judd School, one of the UK's leading state schools. She studied at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena and graduated with a master-level degree in history with distinction. She was born in Germany and lives in Sussex. Blood and Iron is her first book. 15 b/w illustrations