by Timothy Garton Ash
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The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague by Timothy Garton Ash |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
In the 1980s, Timothy Garton Ash was a respected Central Europe reporter, his books The Uses of Adversity, We the People and The Polish Revolution required reading on the area, but still very much a specialised field. Over the last decade, Europe's supposed margins have forced their way centre stage, and everyone wants to know, needs to know about Lech Walesa's fall from power in Poland, why Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia crumbled into pieces, about Bosnia and Kosovo, where Russia is going. These are the stories that now fill our front pages, and dominate discussions in Brussels and beyond. History of the Present is a series of 29 essays, sketches and despatches filed during the 1990s, its title coined by George Kennan in an attempt to capture the uniqueness of Garton Ash's work--at once journalistically contemporary, and yet with a real sense of historical perspective usually only found with that handily sure- footed guide, hindsight. Some of the pieces are now "outdated" in a narrow news sense, but all the more valuable for that--history-with-hindsight will inevitably iron out all the telling creases that Garton Ash records. What he produces is, in his own word, a "kaleidoscope" that eludes crass summary, but even so he concludes with some wise words on what Europe might now mean at the end of the decade. We should all read this book. --Alan Stewart
Review
A chronicle of the major European events from 1990 to 1999 written as they happened, this is a 'history from within' in which Garton Ash collects journalistic pieces written on events as they took place but with the perspective that they will soon become history. This is more than pure journalism as it gives the fullest possible context of events from within their time so that when they are analysed in future the contemporary understanding of their relevance can be taken into account. As he takes us through this tumultuous decade - German unification, the aftermath of Solidarity in Poland, the horrors of the Bosnian and Kosovan wars, the movement towards monetary union in Paris and Bonn - we see that a new European order is being created. That these essays are written in the present not only makes them highly prescient but also gives them a compassionate, personal tone borne out of the reality that people's lives are being affected as he writes. (Kirkus UK)
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In the 1980s, Timothy Garton Ash was a respected Central Europe reporter, his books The Uses of Adversity, We the People and The Polish Revolution required reading on the area, but still very much a specialised field. Over the last decade, Europe's supposed margins have forced their way centre stage, and everyone wants to know, needs to know about Lech Walesa's fall from power in Poland, why Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia crumbled into pieces, about Bosnia and Kosovo, where Russia is going. These are the stories that now fill our front pages, and dominate discussions in Brussels and beyond. History of the Present is a series of 29 essays, sketches and despatches filed during the 1990s, its title coined by George Kennan in an attempt to capture the uniqueness of Garton Ash's work--at once journalistically contemporary, and yet with a real sense of historical perspective usually only found with that handily sure- footed guide, hindsight. Some of the pieces are now "outdated" in a narrow news sense, but all the more valuable for that--history-with-hindsight will inevitably iron out all the telling creases that Garton Ash records. What he produces is, in his own word, a "kaleidoscope" that eludes crass summary, but even so he concludes with some wise words on what Europe might now mean at the end of the decade. We should all read this book. --Alan Stewart
Review
A chronicle of the major European events from 1990 to 1999 written as they happened, this is a 'history from within' in which Garton Ash collects journalistic pieces written on events as they took place but with the perspective that they will soon become history. This is more than pure journalism as it gives the fullest possible context of events from within their time so that when they are analysed in future the contemporary understanding of their relevance can be taken into account. As he takes us through this tumultuous decade - German unification, the aftermath of Solidarity in Poland, the horrors of the Bosnian and Kosovan wars, the movement towards monetary union in Paris and Bonn - we see that a new European order is being created. That these essays are written in the present not only makes them highly prescient but also gives them a compassionate, personal tone borne out of the reality that people's lives are being affected as he writes. (Kirkus UK)
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