Uncivil Society by Stephen Kotkin
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history's most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded-and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies-East Germany, Romania, and Poland-to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class-communism's establishment, or "uncivil society." The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany's pseudotechnocracy to Romania's megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland's cult of Mary to the Kremlin's surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.-
The American Revolution
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Baseball
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The Korean War
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Islam
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California
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The Balkans
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Inventing Japan
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Dangerous Games
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The Hellenistic Age
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The Boys' Crusade
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The Renaissance
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Nonviolence
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The Reformation
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The Catholic Church
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The Romantic Revolution
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Evolution
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The City
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Law in America
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The Age of Napoleon
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London
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Communism
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The Company
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A Short History of Medicine
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The German Empire
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Peoples and Empires
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The Age of Shakespeare
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Hitler and the Holocaust
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Storm from the East
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Prehistory
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The Americas
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The Christian World
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Infinite Ascent
The John P. Kotkin Award is given to Stephen Kotkin. Birkelund '52 is a Princeton University Professor of History and International Affairs, as well as the Co-Director of the Program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy and the Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Steeltown, USSR (California, 1991) is his first novel.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780812966794 |
| ISBN 10 | 0812966791 |
| Title | Uncivil Society |
| Author | Stephen Kotkin |
| Series | Modern Library Chronicles |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 2010-10-12 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |