The Ghosts of Europe

A publishing pioneer and former émigré’s journey into the heart of Europe and the fragile state of democracy after the fall of Communism

More than twenty years ago, the nations of central Europe rushed to reinvent themselves as capitalist societies. Anna Porter traveled to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia to interview the winners and the losers in this grand European transformation to ask: Is democracy working? Her probing encounters run the gamut from Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and Radek Sikorski; to poor farmers betrayed by the new economy; to the wealthiest man in Hungary, a former Communist who capitalized on hurried privatizations; to the generation of twenty-somethings armed with little or no perspective on the grim specter of a Communist past.

Penetrating and powerfully observed, The Ghosts of Europe illuminates themes of tyranny, nationalism, racism and denial in nations with a tumultuous history and an uncertain future.