With a new Afterword by the author.  This is Garton Ash's acclaimed eyewitness account of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989.  Whether covering Poland's first free parliamentary elections or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, The Magic Lantern is a work that defines a historical moment, written by a sympathetic observer who, by the power of his witness, becomes a participant in these events.

“[Garton Ash's] own involvement in these events, intellectual and emotional, is of such intensity that he can speak . . . from the inside as well as from the outside. Yet the sense of historic dimension . . . is never lost. And the quality of the writing places it clearly in the category of good literature.” —George Kennan

“Along with the historian's long view, Gatton Ash has an eye and an ear for the telling detail.” — Washington Past Book World
Witness and History

Warsaw: The First Election

Budapest: The Last Funeral

Berlin: Wall's End

Prague: Inside the Magic Lantern

The Year of Truth

Afterword to the Vintage Edition: 
“Thirty Years On—Time for a New Liberation?”
Timothy Garton Ash is a fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Celebrated for his essays in the New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Polish Revolution, which won the Somerset Maugham Award; The Uses of Adversity, which won the Prix Européen de l’Essai; Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World; and The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the Central European revolutions of 1989, which has been translated into 14 languages. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons. View titles by Timothy Garton Ash

About

With a new Afterword by the author.  This is Garton Ash's acclaimed eyewitness account of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989.  Whether covering Poland's first free parliamentary elections or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, The Magic Lantern is a work that defines a historical moment, written by a sympathetic observer who, by the power of his witness, becomes a participant in these events.

“[Garton Ash's] own involvement in these events, intellectual and emotional, is of such intensity that he can speak . . . from the inside as well as from the outside. Yet the sense of historic dimension . . . is never lost. And the quality of the writing places it clearly in the category of good literature.” —George Kennan

“Along with the historian's long view, Gatton Ash has an eye and an ear for the telling detail.” — Washington Past Book World

Table of Contents

Witness and History

Warsaw: The First Election

Budapest: The Last Funeral

Berlin: Wall's End

Prague: Inside the Magic Lantern

The Year of Truth

Afterword to the Vintage Edition: 
“Thirty Years On—Time for a New Liberation?”

Author

Timothy Garton Ash is a fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Celebrated for his essays in the New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Polish Revolution, which won the Somerset Maugham Award; The Uses of Adversity, which won the Prix Européen de l’Essai; Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World; and The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the Central European revolutions of 1989, which has been translated into 14 languages. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons. View titles by Timothy Garton Ash

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