In a nationalist propaganda pamphlet written just before the outbreak of World War I, the state of German society is described with the words "Everywhere uncertainty, everywhere weakness, everywhere fear, fear, fear." Based on this contemporary perception, historian Joachim Radkau explores the intriguing question of how Wilhelmine society staged nervousness as a characteristic affliction of its time. Through a wealth of individual observations, he succeeds in analyzing nervousness as an interplay between cultural construct and genuine experience of suffering. An original contribution to the history of mentalities of the virulent Wilhelmine era.