Timothy Garton Ash Knihy

Britský historik, novinár a profesor na Oxfordskej univerzite Timothy Garton Ash „žije Európou“ už viac než päťdesiat rokov. V knihe Domoviny sa vydáva na cestu povojnovým kontinentom v čase a priestore. Čerpá najmä z vlastných spomienok a poznámok o významných udalostiach, podáva živé svedectvá hlavných aktérov, vracia sa na miesta, kde sa písala história, a pripomína nám všetky triumfy a pády Európy. Ponúka prehľad udalostí prepletených s osobnými reminiscenciami. Opisuje, ako sa Európa snažila vymaniť z vojnového pekla, aby povstala z devastácie a ruín; a aké víťazstvo zažila pri páde Berlínskeho múra, aby sa zdemokratizovala a zjednotila. Zároveň vykresľuje jedinečnú panorámu obdobia bezprecedentného pokroku a pokúša sa vysvetliť, čo všetko zlyhalo napríklad v dôsledku finančnej krízy v roku 2008 či vojny na Ukrajine. Kniha Domoviny je ohromujúcou zmesou modernej histórie, reportáží a spomienok najvýznamnejšieho spisovateľa, ktorý sa venuje európskym záležitostiam. Rozpráva príbeh Európy v druhej polovici dvadsiateho a na začiatku dvadsiateho prvého storočia o tom, ako sa pomaly zotavovala, oslobodzovala a zjednocovala, aby sa priblížila ideálu súdržného a slobodného kontinentu, na ktorom panuje mier.

Timothy Carton Ash (1955) sa zaoberá novodobou históriou a žije v Oxforde. V 70. a 80. rokoch sa štúdium nemeckého vnútorného odboja proti hitlerovskému režimu prenieslo do Berlína, kde strávil niekoľko rokov, žijúc vo "východnej" a "západnej" časti mesta. Počas 80. rokov pravidelne cestoval po krajinách za železnou oponou a analyzoval emancipačné procesy v strednej Európe, pričom prispieval do popredných periodík ako Spectator, Independent a New York Review of Books. Po roku 1989 objavil spis, ktorý o ňom viedla východonemecká tajná polícia Stasi, označený ako Romeo. Ten ho inšpiroval k napísaniu knihy, ktorá kombinuje reportáž, pamäte a román. Autor sa vracia do svojej minulosti študenta a porovnáva vlastné denníky so záznamami Stasi. Hlavnou ambíciou diela je rekonštrukcia totalitnej mašinérie a povahy studenej vojny. Autor konfrontuje informátorov a dôstojníkov, ktorí spolupracovali na jeho prípade, a skúma ich motivácie. Zároveň sa zaoberá otázkou, prečo sa niektorí stávajú kolaborantmi, zatiaľ čo iní sa stávajú odporcami režimu, pričom nenachádza jednoznačnú odpoveď. Ukazuje, aké zložité je priblížiť sa k „historickej pravde“, keď naše životy závisia od okolností, v ktorých vyrastáme.

Známý oxfordský historik a publicista předkládá ve své knize mimořádně poutavou kroniku uplynulého desetiletí a bohaté řady jeho klíčových událostí od euforického "roku zázraků" 1989 až po celoevropské vystřízlivění konce 90. let. Ashovy kvality jako svědka i analytika evropského politického vývoje vynikají právě v "dějinách přítomnosti" jako pomyslném žánru, v němž má jen málo předchůdců a prakticky žádného konkurenta. Jeho rekapitulace uplynulé klíčové dekády moderní historie západu i východu Evropy v "esejích, črtách a zprávách" psaných jen v minimálním odstupu od popisovaných dějů tak nabízí kromě historického poučení i ukázku špičkové publicistiky, spojující cit pro aktuální detail s uměním zobecňující politické analýzy. Knihu doplňuje podrobná chronologie evropského vývoje v letech 1990-99.

On 4 June 1989 the Communist regime in Warsaw collapsed as Solidarity won the election, 12 days later Imre Nagy was buried in Budapest, 31 years after his execution. The Berlin Wall came down and in Prague, Vaclav Havel masterminded the Velvet Revolution. The author was witness to all these events.

At the start of the 21st century, the world plunged into crisis. What began as an attack on the West by Osama bin Laden soon became a dramatic confrontation between Europe and America. Britain has found itself painfully split, because it stands with one foot across the Atlantic and the other across the Channel. The English, in particular, are hopelessly divided between a Right that argues our place is with America, not Europe, and a Left that claims the opposite. This is today's English civil war. Both sides tell us we must choose. In this powerful new work Timothy Garton Ash, one of our leading political writers, explains why we cannot, need not and must not choose between Europe and America.

For more than thirty years, Timothy Garton Ash has traveled among truth tellers and political charlatans to record, with scalpel-sharp precision, what he has found. Facts are Subversive, which collects his writings since the millennium, addresses some of the crucial questions of our time: what happens to people who have endured long dictatorships when they try to found a democratic state? How can freedom from tyranny be won? How are free expression, equality before the law and equal rights for men and women sustained in a society of different faiths and ethnicities? This is history of the pr

“One of the most brilliant and illuminating interpreters of modern eastern Europe . . . a wonderfully vivid writer . . . He reaches the parts that others do not reach.”—Richard Davy, The Times “The best single account of what happened—and why.”—Newsweek The definitive account of Solidarity’s spectacular rise and tragic fall . . . a book to set the record straight . . . amply documented, indispensable.”—John Darnton, New York Times Book Review A brilliant eyewitness and analyst, Timothy Garton Ash in this book offers a gripping account of the Polish shipyard workers who defied their communist rulers in 1980. He describes the emergence of the improbable leader Lech Walesa, the ensuing tumult that culminated in martial law, and—for this updated edition—the fate of the Solidarity movement in subsequent years.

One of the great political writers of our time offers a manifesto for global free speech in the digital age

From West Germany's "buying free" of people from East German prisons to the summit conversations between Kohl and Gorbachev, from the German minorities in Eastern Europe to the Bonn government's attitude toward opposition movements such as Poland's Solidarity, every important facet of the policy of Ostpolitik is explored.

In the 1980s, Timothy Garton Ash was a respected Central Europe reporter, his books The Magic Lantern, The Uses of Adversity, and The Polish Revolution required reading on the area, still very much a specialized field. In the 1990s, Europe's supposed margins forced their way center stage, and everyone wants to know--needs to know--about Lech Walesa's fall from power in Poland, why Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia crumbled into pieces, about Bosnia and Kosovo, where Russia is going. These are the stories that fill our front pages at the turn of the millennium, and dominate discussions in Brussels and beyond. History of the Present is a series of 29 essays, sketches, and dispatches filed during the 1990s, its title coined by George Kennan in an attempt to capture the uniqueness of Garton Ash's work--journalistically contemporary and yet with a sense of historical perspective usually found only with that handily sure-footed guide, hindsight. Some of the pieces are now "outdated" in a narrow news sense, but all the more valuable for that--history-with-hindsight will inevitably iron out all the telling creases that Garton Ash records. What he produces is, in his own word, a "kaleidoscope" that eludes crass summary, but even so, he concludes with some wise words on what Europe might now mean at the end of the decade.

'Timothy Garton Ash is the best and most perceptive political writer of our time, and this book is a wonderful distillation of his thoughts on an extraordinary range of subjects. They were excellent as individual essays; put together like this, they shine the clearest of lights on an entire decade.' John Simpson

The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define a historic moment, written by a brilliant witness who was also a participant in epochal events. Whether covering Poland’s first free parliamentary elections—in which Solidarity found itself in the position of trying to limit the scope of its victory—or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with enormous sympathy and power. This book is a stunningly evocative portrait of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989 and whose aftereffects are still being felt today. As Garton Ash writes in an incisive new afterword, from the perspective of three decades later: “Freedom’s battle is never finally won. It must be fought anew in every generation.”

How much money are you losing because of poor landing page design? In this comprehensive, step-by-step guide, you’ll learn all the skills necessary to dramatically improve your bottom line, including identifying mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value, defining important visitor classes and key conversion tasks,   gaining insight on customer decision-making, uncovering problems with your page and deciding which elements to test, developing an action plan, and avoiding common pitfalls. Includes a companion website and a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool.

Der renommierte englische Historiker Timothy Garton Ash verfolgt seit Jahren die politischen Entwicklungen in Mittel- und Osteuropa als Augenzeuge in Gesprächen mit führenden Politikern und Intellektuellen. An den Brennpunkten Warschau, Prag, Budapest und Ostberlin begegnete er Lech Walesa, Václav Havel, Jacek Kuron, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Aleksander Dubcek, Bärbel Bohley, Kurt Masur, Hans Modrow u. v. a. Er hat Geheimtreffen, Demonstrationen und Streiks unmittelbar miterlebt, war an den Schauplätzen von der Lenin-Werft in Danzig bis zum konspirativen Treffpunkt im Prager Laterna-Magica-Theater. Reportagen vor Ort, Gesprächsprotokolle, Analysen und atmosphärische Skizzen hat Garton Ash zu einer faszinierenden Dokumentation und Analyse des Jahrzehnts vor und bis zur Revolution 1989 zusammengefaßt. Ein Jahrhundert wird abgewählt wurde 1991 »Das politische Buch des Jahres«.