Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Historians, critics, booksellers and other readers all say this is the history of Europe as we know it that everyone should read.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

“Impressive . . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Magisterial . . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe

Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143037750
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/05/2006
Edition description:	Reprint Edition
Pages:	960
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 9.06(h) x 1.75(d)

About the Author

Tony Judt was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University, as well as the founder and director of the Remarque Institute, dedicated to creating an ongoing conversation between Europe and the United States. He was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and also taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. Professor Judt was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many journals across Europe and the United States. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Thinking the Twentieth Century, The Memory Chalet, Ill Fares the Land, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, and Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, which was one of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2005, the winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in August 2010 at the age of sixty-two.

Table of Contents

Preface & Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part One: Post-War: 1945-1953

I. The Legacy of War
II. Retribution
III. The Rehabilitation of Europe
IV. The Impossible Settlement
V. The Coming of the Cold War
VI. Into the Whirlwind
VII. Culture Wars
Coda. The End of Old Europe

Part Two: Prosperity and Its Discontents: 1953-1971

VIII. The Politics of Stability
IX. Lost Illusions
X. The Age of Affluence
XI. The Social Democratic Hour
XII. The Spectre of Revolution
XIII. The End of the Affair

Part Three: Recessional: 1971-1989

XIV. Diminished Expectations
XV. Politics in a New Key
XVI. A Time of Transition
XVII. The New Realism
XVIII. The Power of the Powerless
XIX. The End of the Old Order

Part Four: After the Fall: 1989-2005

XX. A Fissile Continent
XXI. The Reckoning
XXII. The Old Europe—:and the New
XXIII. The Varieties of Europe
XXIV. Europe as a Way of Life

Epilogue
From the House of the Dead: An Essay on Modern European Memory

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

...brilliantly detailed account of Europe's recovery from the wreckage of World War II presents a whole continent in panorama. (The New York Times Book Review)

Remarkable... The writing is vivid; the coverage-of little countries as well as of great ones-is virtually superhuman. (Louis Menand, The New Yorker)

Editorial Reviews

Judt's massive, learned, brilliantly detailed account of Europe's recovery from the wreckage of World War II presents a whole continent in panorama even as it sets off detonations on almost every page.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Remarkable . . . 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 familar observation freshly turned.” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker

“Impressive . . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Magisterial . . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe

“Brave and remakable.” —The Washington Post

“Brilliant . . . A book that has the pace of a thriller and the scope of an encyclopedia . . . A very considerable achievement.” —The New York Review of Books

“Not likely to be surpassed for many years. . . . This is history writing at its best.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

Judt, a New York University historian, has an admirable range of interests and competence. He is, for a start, a fine social historian; he has thought seriously about Europe's demographic patterns and their likely economic and social consequences; he clearly loves and studies the movies and popular music; and he is very much a historian of ideas. Although he regularly professes not to take the world of Parisian intellectuals very seriously, he himself seems an splendid product of that milieu, as might be expected from a graduate of France's cole Normale Suprieure.
— The Washington Post

David P. Calleo

As Judt movingly draws it, the picture of Europe at the end of World War II is pitiful almost beyond bearing. Some 36.5 million Europeans are reckoned to have died between 1939 and 1945 because of the war. Tens of millions more were uprooted by Hitler and Stalin. In the immediate aftermath of Germany's defeat, the continent was scarred with violent retribution, purges and outbreaks of what in some places - like Greece and Yugoslavia - amounted to civil war. As Judt notes, the war in Europe did not really end in 1945 at all. Neither did the persecution of Jews end with the closing of the death camps: well over a thousand Jews were killed in Polish pogroms after the liberation of Poland.
— The New York Times

Anthony Gottlieb

This is the best history we have of Europe in the postwar period and not likely to be surpassed for many years. Judt, director of New York University's Remarque Institute, is an academic historian of repute and, more recently, a keen observer of European affairs whose powerfully written articles have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Here he combines deep knowledge with a sharply honed style and an eye for the expressive detail. Postwar is a hefty volume, and there are places where the details might overwhelm some readers. But the reward is always there: after pages on cabinet shuffles in some small country, or endless diplomatic negotiations concerning the fate of Germany or moves toward the European Union, the reader is snapped back to attention by insightful analysis and excellent writing. Judt shows that the dire human and economic costs of WWII shadowed Europe for a very long time afterward. Europeans and Americans recall the economic miracle, but it didn't really transform people's lives until the late 1950s, when a new, more individualized, consumer-oriented society began to appear in the West. But Postwar is not just a history of Western Europe. One of its great virtues is that it fully integrates the history of Eastern and Western Europe, and covers the small countries as well as the large and powerful ones. Judt is judicious, even a bit uncritical, in his appraisal of American involvement in Europe in the early postwar years, and he's scathing about Western intellectuals' accommodation to communism. His book focuses on cultural and intellectual life rather than the social experiences of factory workers or peasants, but it would probably be impossible to encompass all of it in one volume. Overall, this is history writing at its very best. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (On sale Oct. 10) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Judt (European studies, NYU; The Burden of Responsibility), a prolific and respected historian of recent Europe, has written a massive but nonetheless 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 60 years. He includes the entire European continent in his consideration, and for American readers his view through this lens may serve to render familiar events differently, adding new dimensions to the America-focused narratives of the postwar years. From its opening chapter, a moving account of the devastation of Europe at the end of World War II, through the thoughtful analysis of the patterns and temper of the "The Old Europe and the New," which provides the closing chapter, this book gives a well-rounded picture of the trends, events, and people that have made contemporary Europe. In less capable hands, it would have been easy for such a huge and all-encompassing work to become a boring slog through names, places, and events. But Judt sees the bigger picture and conveys it ably, making the book lively enough to be read from cover to cover. Not all historians will agree with every one of Judt's assertions, but this book is certain to be a major addition to postwar European studies. For all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05; for an interview with Judt, see "Fall Editor's Picks," LJ 9/1/05.-Ed.]-Barbara Walden, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Few listeners can hope to absorb all the complex maneuverings, but…the task becomes more palatable with the voice of narrator Ralph Cosham. His smooth facility with the spoken word and linguistic nuance keeps one moving forward. He also rises to the author’s verbal complexity, in English and in delivery of smatterings of foreign words.”

AudioFile

A book that has the pace of a thriller and the scope of an encyclopedia…A very considerable achievement…Brilliant.”

New York Review of Books

Massive, kaleidoscopic, and thoroughly readable…[Judt’s] book now becomes the definitive account of Europe’s rise from the ashes and its takeoff into an uncertain future.”

Time

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.”

Foreign Affairs

Remarkable…The writing is vivid; the coverage—of little countries as well as of great ones—is virtually superhuman.”

New Yorker

A riveting and totally involving listening experience as narrated by Ralph Cosham. The sheer variety of languages and place names demand the most experienced and very best of readers and Cosham, a former journalist and stage and screen actor, is more than up to this task…Cosham’s masterful reading makes this accessible to many who might find reading the nearly 850 pages intimidating or overwhelming. For anyone who listens, especially those who have lived through much of this, Postwar will be eye-opening.”

SoundCommentary.com (starred review)

Understanding the complicated and extensive details of the post-WWII political mop-up in Europe requires a 43-hour investment. One could never imagine the endless issues of where to return refugees and how to try war criminals, implement the Marshall Plan, and establish 5,000 miles of borders. Few listeners can hope to absorb all the complex maneuverings, but this audiobook is still worthwhile. The task becomes more palatable with the voice of narrator Ralph Cosham. His smooth facility with the spoken word and linguistic nuance keeps one moving forward. He also rises to the author’s verbal complexity, in English and in delivery of smatterings of foreign words. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

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