Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Penguin Press
Manufacturer: Penguin Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 896
Printing Date: October 06, 2005
Publishing house: Penguin Press
Sale Popularity Level: 328280
Studio: Penguin Press
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review
Almost a decade in the making , this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world’s most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the very first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change—all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.
* A Time and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
* Maps, photos, and cartoons throughout
Amazon.com Review:
World War II may have ended in 1945, but according to historian Tony Judt, the conflict's epilogue lasted for nearly the rest of the century. Calling 1945-1989 'an interim age,' Judt examines what happened on each side of the Iron Curtain, with the West nervously inching forward while the East endured the 'peace of the prison yard' until the fall of Communism in 1989 signaled their chance to progress. Though he proposes no grand, overarching theory of the postwar period, Judt's massive work covers the broad strokes as well as the fine details of the years 1945 to 2005. No one book (even at nearly a thousand pages) could fully encompass this complex period, but Postwar comes close, and is impressive for its scope, synthesis, clarity, and narrative cohesion.
Judt treats the entire continent as a whole, providing equal coverage of social changes, economic forces, and cultural shifts in western and eastern Europe. He offers a county-by-county analysis of how each Eastern nation shed Communism and traces the rise of the European Union, looking at what it represents both economically and ideologically. Along with the dealings between European nations, he also covers Europe's conflicted relationship with the United States, which learned much different lessons from World War II than did Europe. In particular, he studies the sucess of the Marshall Plan and the way the West both appreciated and resented the help, for acceptance of it reminded them of their diminished place in the world. No impartial observer, Judt offers his judgments and opinions throughout the book in an endeavor to instruct as well as inform. If a moral lesson is to come from World War II, Judt writes, 'then it will have to be taught afresh with each passing generation. 'European Union' may be an answer to history, but it can never be a substitute.' This book would be an excellent place to start that lesson. --Shawn Carkonen
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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This is a marvellous book, so nice and easy to read. The author's account of the end of the Soviet Era in the East Countries is very, very interesting. Also excellent are the insights of the events of the 50' and 60', of which I do not remember, since I was a kid.
This is a book that teaches you for live, and makes you think and reflect so much aboout the present.
It is a "must read" for all interested in Europe and the evolution of the Western World.
Rated by buyers -
Having grown behind the Iron Curtain, I lack a lot of knowledge about European history - not knowledge of the facts, which can be found in every history textbook, but knowledge of bigger picture, of the reasons of some events and of the feelings some events created. This book helped me a lot to overcome this want and I would advise it to anyone who wishes to improve one's knowledge of European history.
Rated by buyers 
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Like another reviewer has mentioned this man, professor at the university of New York is an outspoken denier of the right of Israel to exist as a nation.
Read Caroline Glick's latest book for more info.
Christians, Jews, don't buy into this man's propaganda.
Rated by buyers -
In this long and detailed resection of Europe post World War II, Judt has finally put all the little pieces that led to "modern Europe" into place and, more importantly, into perspective. Not since Barbara Tuchman carefully negotiated events has anyone made such a profound effort to help us understand where we are now by retracing the path to the present.
Rated by buyers -
There is every reason to believe that Tony Judt's magisterial survey of the history of Europe since World War II will endure as a chronicle of those times. This is a book through which light shines as it does through the stained glass windows of Chartres.
"Postwar" is animated throughout by the diligence of research, by a refusal to accept unexamined propositions, and by an extraordinary balance between strategic perspective and the intimacy of shared anecdotes in some smoky coffee house. The large moments of postwar European history are recounted in lapidary detail: Budapest 1956; Berlin 1961; Prague (and Paris) 1968; Karol Wojtyla in Poland in 1979; the transformations of 1989. So too are small moments and the granularity of details that are part of the world's often imperfect understanding of Europe: bad British cars; the atrophying of Spanish villages; the homogenization of many European elites; Euro Pop and football.
From Solidarity to Monty Python; from Charles deGaulle to the Greek colonels -- the many tiles in the mosaic of postwar European history (and the intersection between that history and the subcontinent's many cultures) are painstakingly assembled by Tony Judt into a story that leaves a reader deep in thought and a desire to learn more.
As his narrative closes in on the present, Judt probes the evolving phenomenon of "European" identity. What will it mean for the place of Europe in the shared destiny of the West? What will it mean for a sense of "Europe" in relation to its constituent nation-states, and for the cultural and national identities encompassed by the borders of those nation-states? What will it mean for Europeans fortunate enough to possess wealth, education, and engagement with commerce and ideas? What will it mean for those Europeans who do not, and for the subcontinent's dispossessed, and for its growing non-European minorities?
Like the best histories, this book matches learned and often original insights with exceptional storytelling, and regular insertions of acerbic wit. To my fellow American readers, perhaps this explanation will suffice: the story of late 20th and early 21st Century Europe now has its Shelby Foote.
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