The Year That Changed the World
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The Year That Changed the World by Michael Meyer
A riveting, eyewitness account of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War from the Newsweek Bureau Chief in that region at the time. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, many still believe it was the words of President Ronald Regan, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall , that brought the Cold War to an end. Michael Meyer disagrees, and in this extraordinarily compelling account, explains why. Drawing together breathtakingly vivid, on-the-ground accounts of the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the stealth opening of the Hungarian border, the Velvet Revolution in Prague, and the collapse of the infamous wall in Berlin, Meyer shows how American intransigence contributed little to achieving such world-shaking change. In his reporting from the frontlines of the revolution in Eastern Europe between 1988 and 1992, he interviewed a wide range of local leaders, including V clav Havel and Lech Walesa. Meyer's descriptions of the way their brave stands were decisive in bringing democracy to Eastern Europe provide a crucial refutation of a misunderstanding of history that has been deliberately employed to help push the United States into the intractable conflicts it faces today.
Michael Meyer has taught writing and literature courses for more than thirty years since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and before that at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the College of William and Mary. In addition to being an experienced teacher, Meyer is a highly regarded literary scholar. His scholarly articles have appeared in distinguished journals such as American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, Meyer is a former president of the Thoreau Society and coauthor (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. The American Studies Association awarded his first book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau s Political Reputation in America, the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize. . He is also the editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings. He has lectured on a variety of American literary topics from Cambridge University to Peking University. His books for Bedford/St. Martin's include The Bedford Introduction to Literature; The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature; Literature to Go; Poetry: An Introduction; and Thinking and Writing about Literature.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781416558453 |
| ISBN 10 | 1416558454 |
| Title | The Year That Changed the World |
| Author | Michael Meyer |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding type | Other book format |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster Australia |
| Year published | 2009-09-01 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |