Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Exit into History: A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 0-14-014549-4 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Intellectual meets intellectuals: talks, travels, writes
Comment: Eva Hoffman, back among her Polish homeland and other former Iron Curtained nations, offers a thoughtful look at the years just after the breakdown of the wall. Not a travelogue so much as an extended series of conversations with usually well-spoken people much like Hoffman herself. Not a book for those seeking Romany flavor, hotel mishaps, and quaint lore. She largely conveys her impressions and ideas in a style reminding me of essays for the New Yorker or the Sunday magazine of her own employer The New York Times.
Her reflections on Havel's Czech Republic, the still lurking oppressiveness of Romania post-Ceausescu, the Bulgarian-Soviet aura, and the Hungarian cynicism mesh nicely with her own Polish rather aristocratic attitudes (not by birth but by predilection?).
While the report's well-written, it does lapse into an over-reliance on the chat in the salon, so to speak, rather than on the street. You feel as if she, naturally attracted to educated dissidents for the most part, wished to relate their stories to us at the expense of a conventional tour of the countries she visits. For instance, little of Slovakia appears, and the sights she describes stick less in the mind than the ideas she ponders.
Fine, but fair warning for anyone expecting another Patrick Leigh Fermor (pre-WWII) or Brian Hall (Stealing from a Deep Place, 1988--Romania/Hungary/Bulgaria cycled through from an American's p-o-v). A useful introduction to how politics inevitably must give way to the ordinary, the human, the lived experience. Although she may differ from Havel, Hoffman provides a beneficial Western counterpart to his own thinking. 3 1/2 stars.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent
Comment: I'm preparing to move to Romania, and read this book to give me an idea of the way things were over there a few years ago. I greatly enjoyed this book. It was well written, and thought-provoking. Every now and then the author would lapse into excessive use of "textbook speech", but for the most part I appreciated the way she wrote. I also appreciated the way she used various stories to get her information across. For someone with little to no interest in this area, this would not be a good book to start with. However, I found it very readable, and highly recommend it.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Good Portrait of Eastern Europe
Comment: After studying the politics and history of Eastern Europe extensively as an undergraduate in college, I read this book and found it simply marvelous, for in all the history and political science books yo are given fact upon fact, but until I read this book I didn't know what it was like to actually be there. She vividly portrays the countries of the region from an ordinary person's perspective, the sights, the sounds, the feeling in the air of these countries. It can be read as an introduction to Eastern Europe, the avid student, or even the educated expert. It can also be enjoyable as simply leisure reading.
 |
Title: Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 0140127739 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: After Such Knowledge: Where Memory of the Holocaust Ends and History Begins by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 1586480464 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 06 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
 |
Title: To Bear Any Burden: The Vietnam War and Its Aftermath in the Words of Americans and Southeast Asians (Vietnam War Era Classics Series) by Al Santoli, Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Al Santoli ISBN: 0253213045 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: The Secret by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 1586481509 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
 |
Title: Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 0395924871 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 02 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
