ebooks The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg in History

Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A book which is at once accessable and powerfulBy A music fanThis is a powerful book. What Rosenberg has done is in many ways is to ask powerful questions and put those questions in stories which then strike to the core. Interestingly; Timothy Garton Ash; the great British journalist; has powerful quote as a reviewer where he states the book is powerful than the more dense academic tomes. I could not agree more. What she has done (without the gift of linguistic help as other reviewers fairly make clear) is to expose the grey in trying to determine justice post a very oppresive regime.Her stories are accessable; powerful and very complex. She is not perfect; and she is in many ways not claiming to be. What she is though is a great journalist who asks great questions and dares to look past the most simple answers.This book is powerful because you cannot read even one single page without thinking what would I have done in that situation. You are forced to see the world of the former eastern European nations not through rose colored glasses (good students; bad communists); but by looking at the real people and the real decisions that they made.I love Garton Ash's work; and i have a good deal of his writing on Europe. He however has a tendency towards lionizing the rebels; where as Rosenberg always looks at them for what they are. I think they each see truth and perhaps a different form of that truth.Her book is again a ringing testimony to the wisdom of our form of government and the blessings of this country. It also does though beg a question of how the war on terror will change our intelligence activities domestically. As with our athletes who seem 20 years behind the East German swimmers in their adoption of performance enhancing drugs; i hope our government has the wisdom to read and understand the lessons of books like these.A great and profound book in the packaging of a much easier to digest story. This and Stassiland (along with the movie The Lives of Others) makes a great Western view of what was east of the wall.Happy New Year to all.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Haunting to read it just now; with similar struggles resonating through Arab countries and the UkraineBy Rescue AmericaThought-provoking very personal discussion of how individual citizens in 3 countries; Poland; East Germany; and Czechoslovakia; handled the challenges of decades of dictatorial rule in which many ordinary fellow citizens collaborated willingly or unwillingly; knowingly and eagerly or foot dragging or even unknowingly.How Poles responded to their individual assessment of the threat of a Soviet invasion certainly resonates with events in today's Ukraine. The struggles in all of these countries to emerge from the darkness and control of dictatorship into the unfamiliar blinding light of democracy also resonates with today's struggles in Arab countries.Also: a positive word for Citybooks@bellsouth.net; which sent a book that was in like new condition for a very good price0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Both countries denied its citizens good jobs if they opposed CommunismBy Peter LangerI was born in Soviet-occupied East Germany. My family escaped in11/1952 while Stalin was still in charge. My father was born in Bohemia in 1916; which became the Czech Republic. Both countries denied its citizens good jobs if they opposed Communism. The book covers how both countries handled those responsible for communist abuses after the collapse of communism in 1989. It was similar to how South Africa dealt with the abusers under apartheid by having them confess to their abuses; not by having mass trials. I recently visited both countries in 5/2015 for the first time.