The intellectuals who contributed to the east European revolutions of 1989, people such as Adam Michnik and Václav Havel, were concerned with living in truth. What does this mean? Much of this book, as a history of intellectuals and politics, is concerned with the difference between the big truths, the beliefs about great causes and final ends which seem to require mendacity and sacrifice from time to time, and the small truths, the facts as they can be discovered.
