Tony Judt
POSTWAR
A History of Europe Since 1945
For Jennifer
Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present?
Praise for Tony Judt’s Postwar
“If anyone can bring off the impossible task that Tony Judt has set himself in Postwar, it is he…. He brings to Postwar an astonishing range of knowledge and an intense political, intellectual and emotional engagement; these are nicely offset by the intellectual distance that the Channel and the Atlantic have helped to provide and by a wry sense of the innumerable ways in which events play tricks on all of us. The result is a book that has the pace of a thriller and the scope of an encyclopedia; it is a very considerable achievement…. Brilliant.”
“Postwar is a remarkable book…. The excellence of Postwar was no doubt hard to achieve… but it is easy to describe. The writing is vivid; the coverage—of little countries as well as of great ones—is virtually superhuman; and, above all, the book is smart. Every page contains unexpected data, or a fresh observation, or a familiar observation freshly turned.”
“Massive, kaleidoscopic and thoroughly readable… [Judt’s] book becomes the definitive account of Europe’s rise from the ashes and its take-off into an uncertain future.”
“Tony Judt is one of our most dazzling public intellectuals, as thoughtful as he is knowledgeable. Postwar is like having an extended personal seminar on Europe’s journey back both from the ashes of World War Two and the cruel, totalitarian hold of Soviet communism.”
“Nobody is more qualified than Judt to combine serious descriptive history with incisive, original political analysis, to cover both western and eastern Europe, and to pass stinging yet informed judgments on the behavior and evasions, the deeds and the failings, of his subjects…. This monumental work is a tour-de-force.”
“Professor Judt knows more about contemporary Europe than almost any American (or any European, for that matter). In Postwar, he brings that formidable knowledge to bear on the inspiring story of Europe’s transformation from lethal division and devastating war to a peaceful, prosperous pan-continental union. His history of how the Iron Curtain crumbled is definitive.”
“An epically important subject—Europe as both the epicenter of political and ideological catastrophes in the last century and the principal laboratory for an experiment in whatever chance humanity has of a peace in the century just begun—has, to the benefit of us all, found the author it deserves. Tony Judt, long one of the wisest heads and clearest voices around, has produced a magisterial history and a solid foundation for clear thinking about the future. Postwar is meticulous in its scholarship, compelling in the story it tells, and passionate in its judgments. A true masterpiece.”
“Truly superb. It is hard to imagine how a better—and more readable—history of the emergence of today’s Europe from the ashes of 1945 could ever be written.”
“Magisterial… He has written a magnificent conventional history of modern Europe, but its quality and its power come from the way he insists that his narrative is also a history of ideas and of the peculiar vulnerability of the European mind to ideologies and to the patterns of thought and political loyalty they impose.”
“As soon as you realize how good it is, this book will frighten you…. This is a work which, on almost every page, evokes to readers over the age of forty what they once felt, hoped for, took part in, or fled from. Judt has written, in great detail and at great length, the biography of a middle-aged continent trying, after a disgraceful past, to settle down and go straight.”
“Rich and immensely detailed.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Tony Judt… has produced not only the heaviest history of modern Europe ever written, but probably the best…. [He] moves fluently and deftly from politics and economics to films and television, whisking the reader through West German coalition-building, past the French New Wave, and on toward the Eurovision Song Contest…. [A] magnificently rich and readable book.”
“Masterly and exhilarating… Judt has made the ‘culture wars’ between communism and anticommunism a special subject and he deals with this brilliantly once more…. Judt has a fine eye for telling detail…. This is a splendid book to which no review can do proper justice. So many subjects are adroitly dealt with.”
“This is the best history we have of Europe in the postwar period and not likely to be surpassed for many years…. Here [Judt] combines deep knowledge with a sharply honed style and an eye for the expressive detail…. Insightful analysis and excellent writing… overall, this is history writing at its very best.”
“[A] lively and thoughtful historical overview of today’s Europe from the end of World War II through the economic, social, cultural and political changes and continuities of the last sixty years…. Judt sees the bigger picture of the trends, events, and people that have made contemporary Europe…. This book is certain to be a major addition to postwar European studies.”
“Elegant and provocative… a genuinely magisterial account.”
“[Judt’s] prose is lean, his metaphors vivid… He impressively covers a broad array of cultural themes.”
“Compelling and fluidly written.”
“Postwar, Judt’s learned, massive, and often quite wonderful summary of European public life since World War II… A triumph of narrative.”
“For those who want to understand the course of contemporary Europe, the primary material is almost too copious and familiar; it takes a gifted historian to shape it into something fresh and coherent without sacrificing the details. [Postwar] does just that… it offers a brilliant and compelling synthesis of the past sixty years.”