In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond

Description

"Sweeping and replete with alluring detail . . . a haunting yet ultimately optimistic examination of the human condition as found in Romania."-Alison Smale, The New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan, named one of the world's Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, comes a riveting journey through one of Europe's frontier countries-and a potent examination of the forces that will determine Europe's fate in the postmodern age. Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country-a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. In Europe's Shadow is a vivid blend of memoir, travelogue, journalism, and history, a masterly work thirty years in the making-the story of a journalist coming of age, and a country struggling to do the same. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust, and more. Here Kaplan illuminates the fusion of the Latin West and the Greek East that created Romania, the country that gave rise to Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during World War II, and the country that was home to the most brutal strain of Communism under Nicolae Ceau_x0219_escu. Romania past and present are rendered in cinematic prose- the ashen faces of citizens waiting in bread lines in Cold War-era Bucharest; the B_x0103_r_x0103_gan Steppe, laid bare by centuries of foreign invasion; the grim labor camps of the Black Sea Canal; the majestic Gothic church spires of Transylvania and Maramure_x015F_. Kaplan finds himself in dialogue with the great thinkers of the past, and with the Romanians of today, the philosophers, priests, and politicians-those who struggle to keep the flame of humanism alive in the era of a resurgent Russia. Upon his return to Romania in 2013 and 2014, Kaplan found the country transformed yet again-now a traveler's destination shaped by Western tastes, yet still emerging from the long shadows of Hitler and Stalin. In Europe's Shadow is the story of an ideological and geographic frontier-and the book you must read in order to truly understand the crisis Europe faces, from Russia and from within.

Robert D. Kaplanis the bestselling author of nineteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, includingThe Good American,The Revenge of Geography Asia's Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts.He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.For three decades he reported on foreign affairs forThe Atlantic. Hewas amember of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel.Foreign Policymagazine twice named him one of the world's Top 100 Global Thinkers.

"This book reveals the confident, poetical Kaplan . . . but also a reflective, political Kaplan, seeking at times to submerge his gift for romantic generalization in respectful attention to the ideas of others. That tension-between an aesthetic sense of wholeness and the intellectual acceptance of complexity-is the real subject of the book, both as autobiography and as geopolitics."-Timothy Snyder, The Washington Post "A serious yet impassioned survey of Romania . . . [Kaplan's] method is that of a foreign correspondent, firing off dispatches from the South China Sea to North Yemen to the darkest corners of Eastern Europe when it was still Iron Curtain country, and his approach has a Thucydidean texture: a gimlet-eyed realism as gathered by evidence, and guided by an understanding that the knee-jerk of history is self-interest. . . . Kaplan is a regional geographer par excellence-undeniably, whatever you think of his conclusions-a big-picture man."-The Christian Science Monitor "Kaplan is one of America's foremost writers on the region. . . . In a series of deep dives into the region's past-Byzantine, Ottoman, Habsburg and Soviet-he finds parallels and echoes that help us understand the present."-The Wall Street Journal "Kaplan moves seamlessly from sights, sounds, and conversations to the resonance of history. . . . In Kaplan's hands, Romania emerges as no mere footnote, but as a historical and political pivot."-Foreign Affairs "Kaplan's work exemplifies rare intellectual, moral and political engagement with the political order-and disorder-of our world. . . . Kaplan's writing is like the places he visits. It's a terrain, a concentrated expression of a particular part of the world as he sees it. . . . In Europe's Shadow amounts to a kind of historical anthropology plus geopolitics, a deep study of a particular country and people. . . . It shows how, at one and the same time, Romania is distinctive and a key to a broader and deeper understanding of contemporary Europe."-The Huffington Post "Kaplan's is travel writing at its contemporary finest, weaving in the sights and sounds of a faraway land alongside interviews with its philosophers and politicians. . . . [In Europe's Shadow] provides an incisive, tactile introduction to the politics and potential prospects of Central and Southeastern Europe-a region that finds itself once again caught in the headwinds of history."-RealClearWorld "A masterly work of important history, analysis, and prophecy about the ancient and modern rise of Romania as a roundabout between Russia and Europe . . . I learned something new on every page. Robert D. Kaplan is a master."-Tom Brokaw "A favorite of mine for years, Robert D. Kaplan is a thoughtful and insight-driven historian who writes clear and compelling prose, but what I like most about him is his political sophistication. In Europe's Shadow makes you look up and think about what's on the page-a true pleasure for the reader."-Alan Furst