A Kidnapped West

November 1, 2022

The Guardian's Ireland correspondent, Carroll chronicles the IRA's attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in October 1984 in There Will Be Fire. Published on Israel's 75th anniversary, two-time National Jewish Book Award winner Gordis's Impossible Takes Longer considers whether Israel's founders achieved their goal of creating a national homeland that would transform Jewish life (60,000-copy first printing). In 1742, a ship landed on Brazil's coast with 30 starving men feted as survivors of the wrecked British warship the Wager--until three months later, when three stragglers on another ship landing in Chile claimed the Wager's men were mutineers; from the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon). Chair of medieval history at King's College, London, Heather offers new reasons why Christendom grew from a tiny sect persecuted within foundering fourth-century CE Rome to the religion dominating Europe 1,000 years later. Celebrated Czech novelist Kundera, who has lived in France since 1975, argues that the "small nations" of Europe--e.g., Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine--are culturally rooted in Europe and under Soviet rule constituted A Kidnapped West (40,000-copy first printing). Following the LJ-starred The Crown in Crisis, which chronicled the Abdication Crisis of 1936, British historian Larman's The Windsors at War moves on to King George VI and the conflict within the Windsor family during World War II as the Duke of Windsor cozied up to Hitler (40,000-copy first printing). From leading South African political commentator Malala, The Plot To Save South Africa covers the 1993 assassination of Nelson Mandela's prot�g� Chris Hani by a white supremacist hoping to ignite a war, even as Mandela had begun power-sharing discussions with President FW de Klerk. Good-bye, Eastern Europe broadly documents the region briefly called Eastern Europe, moving from pre-Christian times through the great empires (Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian), the rise of communism and fascism, and the post-Soviet era to Russia's invasion of Ukraine; A Polish-born contributor to the Atlantic, has a PhD in Eastern European history from Berkeley (25,000-copy first printing). Granted special access by Queen Elizabeth II to her parents' letters and diaries and to the papers of close friends and family, Smith, the New York Times best-selling author of Elizabeth the Queen, aims to show how a loving marriage helped George VI and Elizabeth lead a nation through war (50,000-copy first printing). From Simon, a former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs on the National Security Council, Grand Delusion tracks the four decades of oil-driven U.S. involvement in the Middle East, begun by the Reagan administration and moving through Desert Storm (which he challenges) to the Obama administration's step back. The acclaimed Winchester leaps nimbly from cuneiform writings through Gutenberg to Google and Wikipedia as he examines Knowing What We Know--that is, how we acquire, retain, and pass on information--and how technology's current capability to do those things for us might be threatening our ability to think (100,000-copy first printing).

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March 1, 2023
A slim volume of early writings by the celebrated Czech author focusing on Central European cultures and languages. Kundera (b. 1929), who has lived in France since 1975, was part of the influential arts and theater movement in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, which helped spur the Prague Spring of 1968. In these republished essays, Kundera asserts that the revival of Czech culture and language (the Czech National Revival) assured the very sovereignty of the nation against the onslaught of globalization. "The process of integration risks absorbing all the small nations, whose only defense can be the vigor of their culture, the personality and the inimitable traits that are their contribution," he said in a speech to the 1967 Writers' Congress. In the showcase essay, "The Kidnapped West, or the Tragedy of Central Europe," which appeared in the French periodical Le d�bat in 1983, Kundera wrote more freely on the significance of the cultural affinity between the Central European countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary) and European culture elsewhere, rooted in Roman Christianity and the Enlightenment. Kundera examines the "succession of revolts" that have convulsed these nations in the mid-20th century and how they have all been brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union. He argues that the post-1945 Soviet crackdown on these countries has been no less than "an attack on their civilization. The deep meaning of their resistance is the struggle to preserve their identity--or, to put it another way, to preserve their Westernness." The author also considers some of the brilliant writers and musicians from these beleaguered nations, examining their existential struggles in opposition to the dominant neighboring German and Russian cultures and languages. Lovely though brief, these essays have fresh resonance as Ukraine remains under siege by Russia. The author's fans will best appreciate this thin book, but general readers may wish for more pieces and further context. Kundera is characteristically incisive, but this is mostly for completists.

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