Iron Curtain Rising: A Personal Journey Through the Changing Landscape of Eastern Europe

by Peter Laufer

An American journalist reports on Eastern Europe, country-by-country, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1991

About the author

Peter Laufer, Ph.D., is the author of more than a dozen books that deal with social and political issues, including "Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq," "Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border," and "Iron Curtain Rising: A Personal Journey through the Changing Landscape of Eastern Eurpoe." He is the coanchor of "The Peter Laufer Show" on radio station Green 960 in San Francisco. More about his books, documentary films, broadcasts, which have won the George Polk, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow, and other awards, can be found at peterlaufer.com. He lives in Bodega Bay, California.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a different look at the collapse of the iron curtain, a personal account. I found it fascinating. My only wish is that I knew more about the technical parts of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. I would definitely recommend this.

[Tom Steinberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the Berlin Wall fell Peter Laufer grabbed a plane to Germany and then spent several months traveling the East/West political divide from Poland to the Adriatic Sea.

This book is a sort of journalistic travelogue. It combines personal description with astute political analysis. Come with Peter on "trip to Commie-land" and find out what Eastern Europe smelled like after some decades of USSR domination.

This is Peter's first book and it's an under-appreciated classic.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book consists of a series of articles on the author's take on each country after not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall; as these are snapshots of a specific time, they are "dated" by definition. Several essays on Germany take up the first part of the book, as the author had lived in Berlin not long before the event, as well as addressing the issue of national re-unification. Worth looking at as a library book, or if a cheap used copy is available.