When it comes to understatements, "the Germans have made some mistakes" is in a class by itself. But one thing they're great at is words. They've got the best words, particularly for feelings of angst or woe. Most everyone knows schadenfreude, the feeling of joy one has at another's misfortune. A more useful term in the melancholy group would be weltschmerz: the sadness one feels when contemplating how far the real world is from an ideal world. Other German words are rich in specificity but impoverished in pith. For example, there's Verbesserungsvorschlagsversammlung, which is a meeting held to hear suggestions...