The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define a historic moment, written by a brilliant witness who was also a participant in epochal events. Whether covering Poland's first free parliamentary elections--in which Solidarity found itself in the position of trying to limit the scope of its victory--or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with enormous sympathy and power.

For forty-five years Europe was divided, and at the center of that divided continent lay a divided Germany. In this brilliantly nuanced book, one of our most respected authorities on Central Europe tells the story of German reunification. Garton Ash has produced a panoramic, dramatic, and definitive account of events that are continuing to transform the map of Europe.

-Eloquent, aware and scrupulous . . . a rich and instructive examination of the Cold War past.- --The New York Times
In 1978 a romantic young Englishman took up residence in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later Timothy Garton Ash--who was by then famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe--returned. This time he had come to look at a file that bore the code-name -Romeo.- The file had been compiled by the Stasi, the East German secret police, with the assistance of dozens of informers. And it...

The Oxford-based Central and East European Publishing Project was a remarkable initiative to support embattled Central and East European publishers and journals. Throughout the nine years of its existence it helped to punch holes through the cultural iron curtain by encouraging translations and a "common market of the mind" between East and West. The Project's history-- told here by some of its leading participants-- illuminates the nature of the recent changes in Central and Eastern Europe.

"Good-bye, Samizdat" offers the first collection of the best of Czechoslovakia's samizdat, underground texts from the era 1948 through 1990. Divided into three sections, the volume includes fiction, cultural and political works, and philosophical essays. The writings reflect the thought of some of Czechoslovakia's best-known minds--Klima, Vaculik, and Havel--as well as others yet unknown in the West. Taken together, they capture the artistic and intellectual mood of a country situated at a focal point between East and West at a fascinating point in history.