Using the medium of the graphic novel to great effect, Jason Lutes’s Berlin: City of Stones and Berlin: City of Smoke offer a history of the city in a way that’s accessible and yet mind-opening. All the benefits of a good novel are here: three-dimensional characters, a dynamic plot and a well-drawn setting.
As in the best graphic novels, the pictures expand the story in a most satisfying way. These two volumes were originally part of Lutes’ ongoing comic book series, called, quite simply, Berlin; they offer the reader a history of Germany in the 1930s, in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power and the outbreak of World War II. Comparisons, as the saying goes, are odious, but this is equally good — though very different — from Art Spiegelman’s iconic Maus. (Nancy Pearl, NPR)