Product Description

Europe in 1945 was prostrate. Much of the continent was devastated by war, mass slaughter, bombing and chaos. Large areas of Eastern Europe were falling under Soviet control, exchanging one despotism for another. Today, the Soviet Union is no more and the democracies of the European Union reach as far as the borders of Russia itself. "Postwar" tells the rich and complex story of how we got from there to here. It tells of Europe's recovery from the devastation; of the decline and fall of Soviet Communism and the rise of the EC and EU; of the end of Europe's empires; and of Europe's uneasy and changing relationships with the memory of the war and with the two great powers that bracket it, Russian and America. With clarity and economy, he tells of developments across the continent as a whole, as well as of the contrasting experiences of Eastern and Western Europe. Along the way, we learn of Greece's Civil War, of Scandinavian social democracy, the stresses of multilingual Belgium, the struggles of Northern Ireland and the Basque country. And this is a history of people as well as of peoples, Churchill and Mitterand, General Franco and General Jaruzelski, Silvio Berlusconi and Joseph Stalin. And "Postwar" also has cultural and social histories to tell: of French and Czech cinema, of the rise of the fridge and the decline of the public intellectual, of immigration and gastarbeiters, existentialism and punk rock, Monty Python and brutalist architecture. Running right up to the Iraq War and the election of Benedict XVI, "Postwar" makes sense of Europe's recent history and identity, of what Europe is and has been, in what can only be described as a masterpiece: Europe in our time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29733 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 960 pages

Irish Times - Rev'd Tim Fanning
'With an eye for the telling statistic... lucid, comprehensive'

New York Review of Books
A book that has the pace of a thriller and the scope of an encyclopaedia...a very considerable achievement

Sunday Times
Judt’s clear-eyed judgment and mastery of detail are at their absolute best… This magnificently rich and readable book’

Customer Reviews

Europe's Guilt
Tony Judt's book is a lively and contentious narrative of Postwar Europe from the effects of WW2 right up to the removal of the last statue of Franco in Madrid on March 17th 2005. The key European events covered in detail: Cold War, formation of the European Union, collapse of Communism, war in the Balkans. Weaved through this is a commanding sense of social and political history from a liberal/left perspective.

It is particular strong on film [and TV] which is used to underscore political and social narratives, with plenty of illustrations from memoirs and satire. The grand theme is Europe's collective guilt over the Holocaust and how the different countries have denied, then acknowledged (or not) their roles. This theme is defining for Judt and it will continue to define Europe's collective persona for future generations. On this latter issue Judt's arguments are well illustrated with examples from literature and Europe's intellectuals - both largely ignored by the politicians.

Europe's future will be tested by whether or not it grow towards something more than just a grand market place for the exchange of goods and services.

My only regret is the lack of a thematic bibliography - bibliographical references are within the text at the bottom of the page only.

This is a big read at 830 pages - but it is engrossing

Stunningly informative
Although a reasonably well-read European, I was stunned by how much I learned from Postwar. It is an amazing work that tracks European development from 1945 to 2005 in political, economical, social and cultural terms. Key political figures as well as philosophers, writers and film-makers are portrayed in the context of their times and circumstances. Their impact at national as well as pan-European levels suddenly make more sense. It seems to me balanced and objective where assessments or judgements are made. I also loved the language and was glad that there were not interminable notes to interrupt the page-turning. This is a book I will read again.

Engrossing, but...
Most reviewers have understandably, and rightly, focussed on the grand themes and the author's interpretation of events and conflicting political philosophies. I read the book at least in part, however, simply to refresh my knowledge of basic historical facts about the postwar era, and I still hope to use it as reference material to meet that same end. What disappointed me, however, was to discover some very basic errors about rather trivial matters which must call into question the overall standard of research and the veracity of what is presented.

For example, on pages 482/3 we are told that the Eurovision Song Contest was first broadcast in 1970 and, in an uncomfortably lengthy rant about its shortcomings, that it was a 'hopelessly dated format' that would have been 'out of date fifteen years earlier'. Which is somewhat ironic given that it was first broadcast in 1956! We can deduce that Prof Judt obviously isn't a Sandie Shaw fan.

In another rather bizarre diatribe, this time against the UK's present-day 'Heritage' industry, he cites what he perceives as the sanitised presentation of the early history of the pottery industry by reference to Josiah Wedgwood, complaining that (schoolchildren) .."...would search in vain for evidence of how the pottery workers lived or why the region was called the Black Country". Which, of course, it wasn't; the 'Potteries' and the 'Black Country' are distinct entities divided by a broad expanse of rural Staffordshire.

On page 299 he tells us that "Englishmen were the first to conquer Everest, with the help of an appropriately colonial guide", a statement which I imagine might cause some consternation amongst denizens of New Zealand and Nepal.

It could just be that Prof Judt is weak on the softer, 'cultural' issues, but my confidence in the rather more weighty 'facts' and obscure minutiae about rather more remote areas, as presented in his book, has been rather seriously dented.

The worst - and most amusing - of several rather sloppy 'typos' appears on page 339, where we learn that in the early 1950s there were "just 89,000 private cars in Spain: one for every 314,000 persons" - so, that's about 28 Billion Spaniards having to thumb a lift...