{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FCRKZDNP?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"B0FCRKZDNP","authors":["Christopher Clark"],"book_id":"9798217060948","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9798217060948","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9798217060948.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","description":"Named a Best Book of the Year by TheTimes (London) As told by one of our greatest historians, the story of the scandal that took down two Lutheran preachers in the heart of nineteenth-century Prussia—a chamber piece of cultish esotericism, pseudoscience, and political resistance that conjures up Europe at the end of the age of reason and presages our current age of misinformation In 1835, Johannes Ebel and Georg Heinrich Diestel were tried for having started a cult. Worse: It was a cult that encouraged scandalous sexual behavior in women, including the daughters of prestigious Prussian families—causing the deaths of two young women from sexual exhaustion. The trial would absorb and polarize the city of Königsberg for half a decade and ruin the lives and careers of its defendants, despite their eventual legal exoneration. The historical moment it encapsulates—a Europe reeling from the triumph and horror of a new industrial, imperial era, struggling to decide which principles will reign in the aftermath of Enlightenment reason—is a fable for our present time of political, social, and existential disquiet. The great Cambridge historian Christopher Clark—known for The Sleepwalkers , his monumental, defining study of the causes of the First World War—came across the files containing this story three decades ago; it has been swirling in his mind ever since. In gripping, narrative prose, Clark immerses us in a Königsberg scarred by the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars, where Immanuel Kant had recently inaugurated the theory of consciousness that completely reshaped humanity’s understanding of itself—but where the distinction between reason and fanaticism was now up for grabs. A Scandal in K ö nigsberg is a European history in exquisite miniature—and a peerless lesson in the theological and philosophical debates that animated the Western world at one of its great moments of transformation. Rich and provocative, A Scandal in K ö nigsberg articulates an unsettling antecedent for our most fiercely litigated contemporary questions of sexual identity, freedom of thought, and who gets to decide what constitutes the truth.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9798217060948","publication_date":"20260310","publisher":"Penguin Publishing Group","slug":"a-scandal-in-k-nigsberg","subtitle":"Kindle Edition","title":"A Scandal in Königsberg"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"HIS010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"European History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POL010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Political History & Ideas","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"REL081000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Clergy Life & Work","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}],"hint":[],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"HIS010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"European History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POL010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Political History & Ideas","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"REL081000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Clergy Life & Work","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"European History","score":1,"slug":"european-history"},{"label":"Political History & Ideas","score":1,"slug":"political-history-ideas"},{"label":"Clergy Life & Work","score":1,"slug":"clergy-life-work"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy European History","Good for readers interested in history","Good for readers who enjoy European History and Political History & Ideas."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Enzo Traverso"],"book_id":"9781839763335","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781839763335.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":13.885,"title":"Revolution","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781839763335"},{"authors":["Fidel Castro","Ali Tariq","Chris Pavlo","Tariq Ali"],"book_id":"9781844671564","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781844671564.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":13.679,"title":"The Declarations of Havana","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781844671564"},{"authors":["Fareed Zakaria","Simon & Schuster Audio"],"book_id":"9780393239232","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780393239232.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":10.6725,"title":"Age of Revolutions","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780393239232"},{"authors":["John Lewis Gaddis"],"book_id":"9780143038276","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780143038276.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":10.559,"title":"The Cold War","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780143038276"},{"authors":["Jane Jacobs"],"book_id":"9780679741954","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780679741954.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":10.5451,"title":"The Death and Life of Great American Cities","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780679741954"},{"authors":["Daniel Immerwahr"],"book_id":"9781250251091","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781250251091.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":10.5438,"title":"How to Hide an Empire","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781250251091"},{"authors":["Howard Zinn","Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor"],"book_id":"9780807043844","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780807043844.jpg?v=20260402T191500Z-bisacv2site-fullset%3A2026-04-05T10%3A13%3A18Z","score":10.5163,"title":"You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780807043844"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:history"],"label":"History","score":0.9238,"slug":"history"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:political science"],"label":"Science","score":0.2945,"slug":"science"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:political science"],"label":"Political","score":0.1549,"slug":"political"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:religion"],"label":"Religion","score":0.084,"slug":"religion"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:history buff gifts"],"label":"Buff","score":0.0434,"slug":"buff"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: History, Science, Political.","Reading lane: European History and Political History & Ideas.","Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":8,"goodreads_reviews_count":6,"quality_score":0.8397}}