Germany was now one country, not two, represented by a tough little woman with a beautiful smile. The twelve EU member states had become twenty-seven. Returning to my old hunting grounds in Brussels after nearly two decades, I was confronted with a bewildering New Europe. He woke after a twentyyear nap in the Catskill Mountains to find that the thirteen British colonies had become the United States. Wandering through the bowels of the new Council of Ministers building in Brussels, I felt suddenly like that great Dutch-American Rip Van Winkle.
It is a testament to Mak's warmth and skill as a writer that even in a chronicle of unrelenting barbarity he has portrayed a humanity worth saving.A couple of weeks ago, I attended a European Union summit meeting for the first time in nineteen years. It's an ideal reading for anyone doing 'le grand tour' across the Old Continent." -The Washington Post "Dazzling, imaginative and mesmerizing." -The Tucson Citizen "Subtle. Mak is a skilled distiller of archival evidence, but his firsthand witnesses deliver us even more harrowingly into the past." -The New York Sun "An original, fresh and first-hand documented essay of recent European history. "The Sunday Telegraph" "From the Hardcover edition.", "Superb. Pray, read his book!" -John Lucas, author of "June 1941: Hitler and Stalin ""It's impossible not to get drawn into this book. The real achievement here is not the unearthing of these nuggets of anecdotal history but the skill with which Mak sets them in context." -"The Herald ""A formidable achievement." -Jan Morris "Geert Mak is Europe's portrait-painter, its impressionist, its poet-musician, the reader of its people's minds. A wonderfully rich journey through time and space, packed with vivid images, enlivened by conversations and stories." -"The Literary Review ""A people's history that does not shy away from the bigger questions posed in the wake of two world wars. Mak doesn't write about Auschwitz and the ethnically cleansed alleys of Srebrenica so much as personally lead you among the concrete walls of these places that have shaped our self-awareness." -Russell Shorto, author of "The Island at the Center of the World ""Fascinating, informative, sometimes exhilarating, often painful, and quite impossible to summarise. It is a testament to Mak's warmth and skill as a writer that even in a chronicle of unrelenting barbarity he has portrayed a humanity worth saving."- Time, "Twentieth-century history is sober business, yet "In Europe" is practically effervescent in its evocation of detail.
It's an ideal reading for anyone doing 'le grand tour' across the Old Continent."- The Washington Post "Dazzling, imaginative and mesmerizing."- The Tucson Citizen "Subtle. Mak is a skilled distiller of archival evidence, but his firsthand witnesses deliver us even more harrowingly into the past."- The New York Sun "An original, fresh and first-hand documented essay of recent European history.
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