Postwar

—Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Spectator

“This is the best history we have of Europe in the postwar period and not likely to be surpassed for many years…. Here [Judt] combines deep knowledge with a sharply honed style and an eye for the expressive detail…. Insightful analysis and excellent writing… overall, this is history writing at its very best.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] 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 sixty years…. Judt sees the bigger picture of the trends, events, and people that have made contemporary Europe…. This book is certain to be a major addition to postwar European studies.”

—Library Journal

“Elegant and provocative… a genuinely magisterial account.”

—The Times Literary Supplement

“[Judt’s] prose is lean, his metaphors vivid… He impressively covers a broad array of cultural themes.”

—The New York Sun

“Compelling and fluidly written.”

—The Oregonian

“Postwar, Judt’s learned, massive, and often quite wonderful summary of European public life since World War II… A triumph of narrative.”

—The Nation

“For those who want to understand the course of contemporary Europe, the primary material is almost too copious and familiar; it takes a gifted historian to shape it into something fresh and coherent without sacrificing the details. [Postwar] does just that… it offers a brilliant and compelling synthesis of the past sixty years.”

—Time Europe

“Postwar… is a stupendous contribution to understanding developments in postwar Europe, especially in the countries behind the Iron Curtain. [Judt’s] brilliant survey of the culture wars is matched by his dramatic narrative of the political turmoil.”

—15 Minutes

“Unusually comprehensive and highly readable scholarship.”

—International Herald Tribune

About the Author

Tony Judt was born in London in 1948. He was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, and has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, and New York University, where he is currently the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies and Director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded in 1995. The author or editor of eleven books, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and many other journals in Europe and the United States. Professor Judt is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Permanent Fellow of the Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna).

Copyright

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First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2005

Published in Penguin Books 2006

Copyright © Tony Judt, 2005

All rights reserved

Map illustrations copyright © ML Design, 2005

Photograph credits appear on pages 833-34.

eISBN: 9781101379615

1. Europe—History—1945- I. Title.

D1051.J84 2005

940.55—dc22 2005052126

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