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.

About the Author

Geert Mak is a journalist and historian, and one of Holland's bestselling writers; his books include Amsterdam and Jorwerd.

Prizes

A spellbinding history of 20th-century Europe that has the scope, pace and capacity to delight of an epic novel.

Reviews

On January 4, 1999, Mak, a journalist and one of the Netherlands' most popular authors, set out from Amsterdam on assignment for his newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, to crisscross Europe in the final year before the millennium to discover "what shape the continent was in." And crisscross he did: Vienna, London; Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Chernobyl, Lourdes, Budapest; Srebrenica and dozens more. For his columns, collected here, Mak used his reporter's eye to describe the vividness of the countryside and cityscapes through which he traveled, his writer's ear to interview individuals who had experienced Europe's most terrible and terrific times, and his historian's pen to narrate the passing of that most extraordinary of centuries. What Mak discovered was that while "Europe" is turning itself into an ostensible "union," there is unexpectedly "little in the way of a shared historical experience." There is no European people, for instance, and every nation has conceived its own version of the catastrophic First and Second World Wars. Mak's brilliant compendium is difficult to define-is it a history book, a travelogue, a memoir?-but stands out as a remarkable, insightful, exhilarating exposition on that peculiar continent across the Atlantic. Map. (Aug. 7) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Dutch journalist and historian Mak (Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City) was commissioned by the respected Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad to travel throughout Europe for one year reporting on the state of the districts he visited and placing them in the context of their 20th-century past. The result is an absorbing account in 66 short chapters divided by chronological time period (1900-99) and by the 12 months of the author's journey. Mak is a sensitive and perceptive observer as he takes us through the 20th century-from Verdun to Berlin, from St. Petersburg to Istanbul, from Chernobyl to Srebrenica-weaving history, eyewitness accounts, his own impressions, and ambience into a short narrative that captures in lapidary prose the essence of each place. At nearly 900 pages, this is a doorstopper. But beautifully written, skillfully translated by Garrett, and in its format of short chapters that keeps with its daily newspaper origins, it is suitable for a year's worth of thought and reflection on Europe now and in its tumultuous 20th century. Appropriate for academic and public libraries and essential for collections supporting lovers of nonfiction. [More than 250,000 copies of the original edition sold in Holland.-Ed.]-Barbara Walden, Univ. of Wisconsin Lib., Madison Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

"Superb. . . . Mr. Mak is a skilled distiller of archival evidence, but his firsthand witnesses deliver us even more harrowingly into the past."
--"The New York Sun"
"An original, fresh and first-hand documented essay of recent European history. It's an ideal reading for anyone doing 'le grand tour' across the Old Continent."
--"The Washington Post"
"Dazzling, imaginative and mesmerizing."
--"The Tucson Citizen"
"Subtle. . . It is a testament to Mak's warmth and skill as a writer that even in a chronicle of unrelenting barbarity he has portrayed a humanity worth saving."
--"Time"