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    Europe Since 1989: A History
    Europe Since 1989: A History
    Europe Since 1989: A History
    Audiobook12 hours

    Europe Since 1989: A History

    Written by Philipp Ther

    Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies

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    About this audiobook

    The year 1989 brought the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. It was also the year that the economic theories of Reagan, Thatcher, and the Chicago School achieved global dominance. And it was these neoliberal ideas that largely determined the course of the political, economic, and social changes that transformed Europe over the next quarter century. This award-winning book provides the first comprehensive history of post-1989 Europe.

    Philipp Ther offers a sweeping narrative filled with vivid details and memorable stories. He describes how liberalization, deregulation, and privatization had catastrophic effects on former Soviet Bloc countries. He refutes the idea that this economic "shock therapy" was the basis of later growth, arguing that human capital and the "transformation from below" determined economic success or failure. Most important, he shows how the capitalist West's effort to reshape Eastern Europe in its own likeness ended up reshaping Western Europe as well, in part by accelerating the pace and scope of neoliberal reforms in the West, particularly in reunified Germany. Finally, bringing the story up to the present, Ther compares events in Eastern and Southern Europe leading up to and following the 2008-9 global financial crisis.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 27, 2017
    ISBN9781515977421
    Author

    Philipp Ther

    Prof. Dr. Philipp Ther lehrt am Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte der Universität Wien. Er beschäftigt sich mit Transformationsprozessen, der Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.

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    Reviews for Europe Since 1989

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      An extremely detailed piece of an otherwise not very well known part of recent history. It reminds us that the very things we take for granted like threats to freedom and democracy aren't really extinct.
    • 4/5
      I was going to be much harsher, but the top reviews at this moment are both very poorly done take-downs, and I didn't want to pile on. So, instead, I'll focus on what's good about the book. I don't like this position.

      Ther's book is important because so much 'European' history is just the history of a small handful of generally successful countries: France and Germany in the first rank, then the smaller western European nations, maybe a few paragraphs about Spain and Italy... but certainly never anything east of Austria. Ther's book is a course-correction, given a ludicrous title that is sure to mislead people in any number of reasons. Blame the press, not the author: the German title, in my dreadful translation, was 'The New Order of the Old Continent: A History of Neoliberal Europe.' That is precisely what the book is, provided you remember that only very recently has Western Europe become 'Europe'; in the 'Old Continent' days, the imaginary center of Europe was much further East. And this is a book about the effects of neoliberal policies (creating markets, liberalizing the regulation of economic life, financialization of the economy, and so on), predominantly in Eastern Europe, though with good stuff on Germany and Austria and so on as well. It is an argument, not a history: it aims to draw up a fair scorecard for a series of policies that promised unending plenty and delivered... well, not that.

      The general claim, as I remember it: neoliberal policies were imposed on Eastern European nations at and after 1989, with the support of Western European voters and governments; following this test run (the evidence was shouting 'Hey! This was not a good idea!'), those same policies were then imposed on Western European states. Those policies then, unsurprisingly, yielded the great financial crash (see: Tooze, 'Crashed') and a variety of deeply illiberal governments. Readers who prefer their history written in the blood of vanquished Communists might find this somehow questionable; anyone who knows anything about post-Communist Europe will nod along, sadly.

      So, those reviewers who complain that this is just a screed against neoliberalism are not exactly wrong, but they're certainly being swayed by Cold War era certainties that Ther is at pains to avoid. As in most good history, there are no heroes, but there were alternatives.

      My original review was just going to be about how this was dry as dust and had no narrative momentum and, like far too many history books translated from German, is almost unreadable. But hey, it's responsible and packed with data and apparently makes cold warriors angry, so I've added an extra star.