Songs for a Revolution: The 1848 Protest Song Tradition in Germany. By Eckhard John and David Robb. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2020. 384 pp. ISBN 1640140484

John and Robb introduce an Anglophone audience to the evocative term Liederhort, or song treasury, and while this collection absolutely earns itself that appellation as a hoard of historical treasures, its implications transcend its relatively niche demarcation of subject matter. Don't judge this book by its cover: the illustration of revolutionary leader Friedrich Hecker is sadly pixellated. [...]although John mentions Emanual Geibel's ‘Protestlied für Schleswig-Holstein’ from 1848 (p. 13) – more than a century before the Oxford English Dictionary notes the usage of ‘protest song’ – Geibel's song is not included.1 Editorial decisions are puzzling: each of the 22 songs (no reason is given for that number) takes the form of a short essay preceding one or more variants of the lyric, followed by settings of the melody, which seems a little cart-before-the-horse.