A thoughtful insider’s perspective on Eastern Europe’s fitful steps toward democracy.
A Croatian journalist and novelist reconsiders what’s gone right—and wrong—in post-communist Eastern Europe.
In this sequel to Café Europa (1997), Drakulić admits that Eastern Europeans had a “perhaps too rosy” view of the benefits of unity with the West and the ease of attaining it. Especially since the influx of immigrants in 2015 and 2016, questions of national identity have morphed into a virulent nationalism: “These sorts of ideas used to travel from west to east; now they are moving in the opposite direction, as if nationalization and Balkanization were no longer the property of Eastern Europe alone.” The author often returns to points she’s made before but generally gives them fresh life in these 15 graceful essays in which ordinary people and events tend to become metaphors for larger issues—e.g., the “fantastic” European health insurance card or the “ugly” revival of anti-Semitism on the continent. “European Food Apartheid” begins with EU and other investigations that found that food producers were sending subpar products to Poland, Bulgaria, and other former communist countries but opens out to suggest why Eastern bloc nations feel like “second-class consumers” in the EU. Another essay involves a widowed Serbian immigrant and much-admired shopkeeper in Stockholm whose only companion, a pet parrot, was confiscated by Swedish police when he failed to heed their warning to get a larger cage. The incident suggests why Balkan expatriates may feel like strange birds no matter how assimilated. In laying bare human emotions, Drakulić at times slights the larger political picture—in analyzing Viktor Orbán’s appeal to Hungarians, she fails to note that his government largely controls the media, which gives them a lopsided picture of him—but overall, she’s a fine guide to many aspects of a region poorly understood by much of the West.
A thoughtful insider’s perspective on Eastern Europe’s fitful steps toward democracy.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-14-313417-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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