In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century by Geert Mak

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In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century by Europe Travel Books

In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century by Geert Mak
Price: $13.60

Features

Paperback: 896 pages

Publisher: Vintage June 10, 2008

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307280578

ISBN-13: 978-0307280572

Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.7 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. On January 4, 1999, Mak, a journalist and one of the Netherlands' most popular authors, set out from Amsterdam on assignment for his newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, to crisscross Europe in the final year before the millennium to discover what shape the continent was in. And crisscross he did: Vienna, London; Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Chernobyl, Lourdes, Budapest; Srebrenica and dozens more. For his columns, collected here, Mak used his reporter's eye to describe the vividness of the countryside and cityscapes through which he traveled, his writer's ear to interview individuals who had experienced Europe's most terrible and terrific times, and his historian's pen to narrate the passing of that most extraordinary of centuries. What Mak discovered was that while Europe is turning itself into an ostensible union, there is unexpectedly little in the way of a shared historical experience. There is no European people, for instance, and every nation has conceived its own version of the catastrophic First and Second World Wars. Mak's brilliant compendium is difficult to define—is it a history book, a travelogue, a memoir?—but stands out as a remarkable, insightful, exhilarating exposition on that peculiar continent across the Atlantic. Map. (Aug. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Sweeping in scope, brimmming with luxurious and telling detail, electric in prose style, and deeply comprehending in its understanding of the subject, this Dutch writer's magnum opus is the result of a commission he accepted from the newpaper he worked for: a record of his year-long travels throughout Europe at the end of the millennium. His charge was to see if a workable definition of Europe still had relevance—specifically, if there exists sufficient commonality among the European nations to make a definition feasible. The second layer of his writings takes the form of his simultaneous consciousness of the history of each place he visited; it came home to him during his jaunts that "all the different stages of the twentieth century are being lived, or relived, somewhere." The history of the twentieth century, he discovered, was indelibly etched into how almost all Europeans have led their lives at any point in the century. Mak moves thoroughly but nimbly through both time and location, correlating now to then in particularly dramatic episodes, resulting in a beautiful way to learn about both European history and current events. Hooper, Brad --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century (Hardcover) I did not choose this book. It was presssed upon me by a very intelligent friend. "Well," I thought, "I'm not sure that even an intelligent friend is worth trusting for an 800 page history of Europe in the twentieth century." Oh, was I wrong. The book is a stupendous achievement. Truly, can one think of another book (in only 800 short pages) that is able to contain a complete century, and all the countries, of Europe? And he does it with an artist's eye. Lord, how well this man can write. I reach out to you, to whoever has happened upon this review, and urge you to buy this book. i read it through just as I would have a novel, and plan on re-reading it straight through again. Take the plunge. You won't be sorry.

In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century
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Updated on 10-31-2008.