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'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial
Times From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a
stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of
this most fragile and fraught new millennium. How did the great
European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? In this
illuminating book, Geert Mak - one of Europe's best-loved
commentators - charts the seismic events that have shaped people's
lives over the past twenty years. He moves through the rocky
expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks
across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, and on
to the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit. Like no other, Mak
blends history, politics and culture with the stories and
experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He
brings this continent to life, and asks: what role does Europe now
play, and how might we face our fresh challenges together? 'A
powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian 'Mak is a truly
cosmopolitan chronicler' Independent
In this book Geert Mak returns to the small Frisian village of his
childhood, Jorwert (pop. 330 and falling). It's a typical European
village where the shops are closing down, the few children left
will escape to a less arduous life in the city and it's becoming
increasingly isolated. Jowert has more in common with an English
village than with Amsterdam, and it's moving story of neighbours
and their efforts to preserve their long established way of life is
relevant to the changing face of the countryside everywhere in
Europe.
Cosmopolitan, stylish, decadent, Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture but also a city of civil wars, uprisings and bloody religious purges. In his book, a journey through the turbulent history of one of Europe’s cultural capitals, Geert Mak shows his eye for the unexpected and the bizarre. A medieval lady’s shoe unearthed during building work; a Rembrandt sketch of a hanged girl; graffiti on the side of a grand house, foretelling the city’s doom, said to have been applied by a deranged burgomaster in his own blood. Using diaries and eyewitness accounts, Mak paints a vivid portrait of the city through the centuries: its bustling harbour, its grand houses, its slums, its fabled wealth, the catastrophic winters, bloody insurrections, and the evolution of the mentality that shaped it. He has produced an original and readable social history and an engaging alternative travel guide.
Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing
the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to
Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and
witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge
of a new millennium. The result is mesmerising: Mak's rare double
talent as a sharp-eyed journalist and a hugely imaginative
historian makes In Europe a dazzling account of that journey, full
of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of
prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser
Wilhelm II to Adriana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the
gates of the camp at Birkenau. But Mak is above all an observer. He
describes what he sees at places that have become Europe's
well-springs of memory, where history is written into the
landscape. At Ypres he hears the blast of munitions from the Great
War that are still detonated twice a day. In Warsaw he finds the
point where the tram rails that led to the Jewish ghetto come to a
dead end in a city park. And in an abandoned creche near Chernobyl,
where tiny pairs of shoes still stand in neat rows, he is
transported back to the moment time stood still in the dying days
of the Soviet Union. Mak combines the larger story of
twentieth-century Europe with details that suddenly give it a face,
a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an
eyewitness to his own half-forgotten past, full of unknown
peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. In Europe
is a masterpiece; it reads like the epic novel of the continent's
most extraordinary century.
The Vintage Classics Europeans series - with covers provided by
textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions of
European masterpieces, celebrating the warp and weft of a shared
literary treasury. In 1999, journalist and historian Geert Mak
criss-crossed the continent in the simple yet monumental quest to
trace European twentieth-century history as the world slipped into
the twenty-first. In Europe is a dazzling account of that journey,
and combines the larger story of Europe with intimate, vivid
detail. It is also now a poignant reminder that the European
project was then and is now a unprecedented experiment; that we
still have 'a great deal to tell each other and a great deal to
explain.' TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH BY SAM GARRETT 'A wonderfully
rich journey through time and space' Independent on Sunday
Istanbul's Galata Bridge has spanned the Golden Horn since the
sixth century AD, connecting the old city with the more Western
districts to the north. But the bridge is a city in itself, peopled
by merchants and petty thieves, tourists and fishermen, and at the
same time a microcosmic reflection of Turkey as the link between
Asia and Europe. Geert Mak introduces us to the woman who sells
lottery tickets, the cigarette vendors, and the best pickpockets in
Europe. He tells us about the pride of the cobbler and the
tea-seller's homesickness. And he describes the role of honor in
Turkish culture, the temptations of fundamentalism and violence,
and the urge to survive, even in the face of despair. These stories
of the bridge's denizens are interwoven with vignettes illuminating
moments in the history of Istanbul and Turkey and shedding light on
Turkey's relationship with Europe and the West, the Armenian
question, the migration from the Turkish countryside to the city,
and the demise of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green
pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small
towns and cities from New York to New Orleans.The trip became
Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books. Half a century
on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck's home. Mile after mile, as
he retraces Steinbeck's footsteps through the potato fields of
Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest and stumbles across
glistening suburbs and boarded-up stores, Mak searches for the
roots of America and what remains of the world Steinbeck describes.
How has America changed in the last fifty years; what remains of
the American dream; and what do Europe and America now have in
common?
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