In the days of the old Empire, Saxony was one of the most powerful and culturally rich of Germany’s individual states. Frank-Lothar Kroll’s highly readable account guides us through its intriguing history. He covers the period from the first settlers there to the federal state that we know today, reporting on its medieval beginnings, its heyday in the 17th and 18th century, integration into the German Empire, the end of the monarchy and the years of the Third Reich and the old German Democratic Republic (GDR). He succeeds in interweaving political, economic, cultural and dynastic developments in the most engaging of ways.