The subtitle of BURNING DOWN THE HAUS, PUNK ROCK, REVOLUTION, AND THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, may lead you to believe, as it did me, that this book makes the case for punk rockers causing the fall of the Berlin Wall. But no, not exactly. Rather, the messages in punk rock songs and the attitude of the punk rockers contributed (just partially or in large part depending on who tells the story) to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Tim Mohr’s research for this book was mostly through his contacts with punk rockers and former punk rockers. Therefore, the book was written from their perspective and sometimes even sounds like a punk rocker wrote it, swear words (particularly the F word) and all.

Maybe their attitude, their messages incorporated in their songs, was the beginning. So Mohr introduces us to a few punk rockers and writes about how they suffered for those messages yet persevered. Then he shows how more and more punk rockers found each other and, so, became louder over the years.

They didn’t want to leave East Germany; they wanted for fix it.

Mohr takes the reader all the way to the early 1990s, to post-Berlin Wall. The punk rockers’ ideal life did not come to be, but their attitude was part of the revolution that caused the demise of Communism in their country.