At the terrible heart of the modern age lies Auschwitz. In a total inversion of earlier hopes about the use of science & technology to improve, extend & protect human life, Auschwitz manipulated the same systems to quite different ends. In Sybille Steinbacher`s terse, powerful new book, the reader is led through the process by which something unthinkable to any European in the 1930s had become a sprawling, industrial reality during the course of the world war. How Auschwitz grew & mutated into an entire dreadful city, how both those who managed it & those who were killed by it came to be in Poland in the 1940s, & how it was allowed to happen, is something everyone needs to underst&.