This is an up-to-date, captivating and uncompromising portrait of a great country and its people. At the top of the European class, polite, hard-working and rarely caught at fault, Germany, 20 years after reunification, has enjoyed its hitherto well-controlled growth at leisure: culture, abundance, a perfected social system.

But something in the German identity has recently become strained. The crisis, its geopolitical positions and European failures have shaken it. Although Germany is the world's fourth-largest power, it is sometimes unhappy about the failures of its social cohesion, its difficulties in integrating new immigration flows, and its role as a docile European giant. For the population, which no longer intends to flagellate itself because of a past that's too onerous, it's time to break with the past and assert itself. But who exactly are these Germans?