"Berlin Electropolis is the first English-language history of neurasthenia or of nerves in the German context. However, the author does more than just narrate the history of this central, yet puzzling malady; he discusses the construction, maintenance, and ultimate unraveling of a cultural assumption, by which modernity and progress were seen as creating nervous pathology. Killen introduces readers to a great deal of fascinating material and forges new connections between science, culture and society."—Paul Lerner, author of Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930