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    The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
    The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
    The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
    Ebook369 pages6 hours

    The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall

    By Michael Meyer

    4.5/5

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    ON THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, MICHAEL MEYER PROVIDES A RIVETING EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE THAT BRILLIANTLY REWRITES OUR CONVENTIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THE COLD WAR CAME TO AN END AND HOLDS IMPORTANT LESSONS FOR AMERICA'S CURRENT GEOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES.

    " Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" President Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation when visiting Berlin in 1987 has long been widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The United States won, so this version of history goes, because Ronald Reagan stood firm against the USSR; American resoluteness brought the evil empire to its knees.

    Michael Meyer, who was there at the time as a Newsweek bureau chief, begs to differ.

    In this extraordinarily compelling account of the revolutions that roiled Eastern Europe in 1989, he shows that American intransigence was only one of many factors that provoked world-shaking change. Meyer draws together breathtakingly vivid, on-the-ground accounts of the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the stealth opening of the Hungarian border, the Velvet Revolution in Prague and the collapse of the infamous wall in Berlin. But the most important events, Meyer contends, occurred secretly, in the heroic stands taken by individuals in the thick of the struggle, leaders such as poet and playwright Vaclav Havel in Prague; the Baltic shipwright Lech Walesa; the quietly determined reform prime minister in Budapest, Miklos Nemeth; and the man who privately realized that his empire was already lost, and decided -- with courage and intelligence -- to let it go in peace,Soviet general secretary of the communist party, Mikhail Gorbachev.

    Reporting for Newsweek from the frontlines in Eastern Europe, Meyer spoke to these players and countless others. Alongside their deliberate interventions were also the happenstance and human error of history that are always present when events accelerate to breakneck speed. Meyer captures these heady days in all of their rich drama and unpredictability. In doing so he provides not just a thrilling chronicle of the most important year of the twentieth century but also a crucial refutation of American political mythology and a triumphal misunderstanding of history that seduced the United States into many of the intractable conflicts it faces today. The Year That Changed the World will change not only how we see the past, but also our understanding of America's future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateSep 8, 2009
    ISBN9781439100493
    Author

    Michael Meyer

    MICHAEL MEYER is the author of three critically acclaimed books, as well as articles in the New York Times and other outlets. A Fulbright scholar, Guggenheim, NEH, Cullman Center and MacDowell fellow, and the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, Meyer is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches nonfiction writing. He lives in Pittsburgh.

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    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This book has two purposes: first, as the author says in his 'notes on sources,' "to tell a story, largely unknown....a firsthand account of the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall." By 'largely unknown', Meyer means that few Americans know about the individual communist leaders and reformers whose actions and reactions drove the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. Above all, Meyer wants readers to understand that the fall wasn't inevitable; the way it played out depended on a series of decisions by individuals, great and small. One of the most passionate passages in the book argues that even when great crowds of citizens gathered in protests in East Germany, the outcome of the night could turn on the decision of a single individual to yell a galvanizing comment: "It is immensely heartening, this view of history. So intimate, so uplifting, so human."Meyer's second purpose is emphasized in the epilogue: to strip away the myth that confrontational American power brought about the peaceful collapse of communism. Meyer believes this interpretation subsequently inflated America's sense of its own ability to shape the world, leading the US into unwise and ineffective foreign policies under Clinton and especially under George W. Bush (including but not limited to the invasion of Iraq). At its best, the book is a quick and engaging memoir of 1989 as it unfolded around the author. However, the book lacks the detail needed to offer much historical insight -- it describes the conditions in Eastern Bloc countries through anecdotes, rather than statistics, for example, so it's hard to understand exactly how weak the failing economies were. On the other hand, read as a memoir, the story feels detached; the anecdotes are episodic, and the sketches of historical figures often unrevealing. The writing is also loaded down with metaphors pushed too far, such as an extended comparison of the public to the wildebeests of the Serengeti; of Polish voters excising names on a ballot to a cavalry charge; of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution as theater. Ultimately, this book seems most useful as an account to read side by side with several others, including memoirs by some of the key reformers.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I have ever read. A first hand account of events that shook the world and changed it for the better.
    • 5/5
      gxbgs

    Book preview

    The Year that Changed the World - Michael Meyer

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