Stories Without Borders
The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event
Julia Sonnevend
Reviews and Awards
"Julia Sonnevend's book is not only a splendid work of cultural history but a brave attempt to rethink the place of media in modernity. At once lucid, iconoclastic, and constructive, Stories Without Borders helps us imagine how events become not only larger but also smaller than life, only to become larger again; how they crystallize into milestones as well as signposts at crossroads. Without succumbing to chic theoretical turns or what she deftly calls 'the tyranny of details,' she helps our collective intelligence along a needed path to maturation." --Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Columbia University
"Challenging the corrosive discourse of suspicion, Julia Sonnevend demonstrates the continuing, indeed pivotal presence of the symbolic in contemporary life. Beautifully written, rigorously conceptualized, and deeply researched, Stories without Borders is a brilliant exemplar of cultural sociology." --Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University
"Did the Wall really fall? This book is important for showing how collective memory can construct a media event-retrospectively!" --Elihu Katz, Emeritus Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
"In a political moment in which the president of the United States campaigned on the building of a wall as a solution to social problems, Julia Sonnevend's Stories without Borders is a welcome read. In a book that is both provocative and convincing, Sonnevend challenges us to question our personal and collective memory, as much as they can be disentangled from one another, about the fall of the Berlin WallELIt is a welcome addition to the collective memory and media events literature, one that should spur productive debates." --Matt Carlson, Journalism
"Taken as a whole, Stories Without Borders makes a significant contribution to the literature on media events, and provides important guideposts for future analysis of transnational stories across media and how they are remembered and retold-stories that may or may not be global, may or may not be iconic, and may or may not be about events." --Karin Becker, Journal of Communication
"In the wake of the momentous political changes of 2016, the role of the media and how they predict and report, analyse and spin the news has become headline material in its own right. Julia Sonnevend's impressively clear and engaging Stories without Borders is therefore a timely publication Arguably, the example of the Berlin Wall provides a particularly telling narrative, but the principal patterns [Sonnevend] proposes are thought-provoking and translate well to other topics. However, if the way the media create highly symbolic global stories and this process helps us to identify with topics, then it is just as interesting to muse over the obvious lack of some stories. Tellingly, the European Union, steeped in history, rich in events, has never been afforded this kind of mediated and spellbinding narrative of global relevance." --Times Higher Education
