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History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s
The 1990s. An extraordinary decade in Europe. At its beginning, the old order collapsed along with the Berlin Wall. Everything seemed possible. Everyone hailed a brave new Europe. But no one knew what this new Europe would look like. Now we know. Most of Western Europe has launched into the unprecedented gamble of monetary union, though Britain stands aside. Germany, peace...more
Paperback, 496 pages
Published
July 1st 2009
by Vintage
(first published 1999)
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My review published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000:
Essays, Sketches and Dispatches From Europe in the 1990s By Timothy Garton Ash Random House; 405 pages; $29.95
Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash, best known for his New York Review of Books essays, has probably had more serious, face-to-face conversations with the pivotal European leaders who reshaped the world in the 1980s and 1990s than anyone else who practices journalism.
Who else could supplement...more
Essays, Sketches and Dispatches From Europe in the 1990s By Timothy Garton Ash Random House; 405 pages; $29.95
Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash, best known for his New York Review of Books essays, has probably had more serious, face-to-face conversations with the pivotal European leaders who reshaped the world in the 1980s and 1990s than anyone else who practices journalism.
Who else could supplement...more
A kaleidoscopic book about the most important decade of my lifetime: from the time the Soviet Empire crumbled in 1989 to the end of major air and ground fighting in the former Yugoslavia in 1999. I had read many of these pieces in the New York Review of Books when they were originally published. Seeing them together for the first time, with a helpful smattering of bridging "chronologies," gives me a breathtaking view of new countries being formed and old ones sinking under the waves. I...more
Well-written and well-observed journalism from Central/Eastern Europe in the 1990s, with a particular focus on Germany, Poland, and the Balkans. The pieces in this collection are roughly contemporaneous with the events they describe, so it's interesting to see how Ash's thinking evolved, and where he got things right and got things wrong. (I found it interesting, for example, that Ash predicted that the eventual fall of Milosevic in Serbia and the achievement of independence for Kosovo would be ...more
I've read several books by this author: The Polish Revolution, The Uses of Adversity, and The Magic Lantern. He's a fantastic author; a reporter in Central Europe who witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Empire and rejection of Communism in several nations.
I've been sipping on this all summer. I had small children for the duration of that decade so I missed a lot of the details at the time. These essays were one way to put them in order. Timothy Garton Ash has an eye for the telling detail and an ear for writing it down. He is never dull or maudlin. He also talks to everybody so you get many different sides of every situation. He puts the map of europe that was drawn by the 90's at the end of the book which I thought was a nice touch.
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A masterful collection of essays. Even years after they were written, they still sound informed and true. His focus is Central Europe, not all of Europe. Combining historical analysis with personal involvement, it's incredible to read about the events he describes. I feel a certain jealousy of a man who consciously searched out History, found it, and knew what he was looking at.
As expected, persuasive and often prescient politico-historical analysis - particularly on issues such as the shortcomings of European monetary union.
Long going at times but made up for it by ending with a significant amount of discussion on the Balkans.
Ryan Dawley
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