The Year of Miracles

This volume of reports by the world-renowned British historian, political scientist and journalist presents a unique account of the revolutionary events of 1989 as they gradually affected four Central European communist regimes, including the former Czechoslovakia. Focusing on the key events of the historical moment, such as the June elections in Poland and the funeral of Imre Nagy in Hungary, and the November fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which he witnessed in person, the author gives an unforgettable account of the revolutionary transformation that definitively changed the face of Central and Eastern Europe with his characteristic erudition, personal engagement and gentle humour.

The third edition of the book is published by PROSTOR on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution with a new essay in which the author analyses the state of Central Europe three decades after the fall of communism and reflects on the causes of the division of society and the crisis of trust in liberal democracy.

Timothy Garton Ash (1955), a British historian and writer, is Professor of European Studies at Oxford and is also a professor at Stanford in the United States. He is a regular contributor of essays to The New York Review of Books and a columnist on current international affairs for the Guardian. His books The Free World (2006), a reflection on the crisis of the West, divided by its attitude to the war in Iraq, and on variants of further development in Western society, History of the Present. Essays, features and reports from Europe in the 1990s (2003) and Volume (1998), which he was inspired to write after reading his personal records from the East German state security archives. His most translated book, into a total of twenty languages, was The Year of Miracles. Time magazine ranked him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005.

If ever a journalist was in the right place at the right time, it was undoubtedly the case of Timothy Garton Ash and Central Europe in 1989. ... Thanks to him, readers can now follow these watershed events as if they were direct participants.

Financial Times

Garton Ash was a keen observer and at times almost a co-actor in the revolutions that swept the region of Central and Eastern Europe. As an expert on the context, leading personalities and prevailing political and intellectual currents, he describes and interprets the dramatic events of 1989 with a confidence and charm unparalleled by other Western commentators.

Foreign Affairs

One of the most brilliant and inspiring interpreters of modern Eastern Europe - not only for the astonishing vividness of the narrative, but also for its insight into the tangle of memories, traditions and national conflicts from which these extraordinary events emerged.

The Times