The shattered bloc : behind the upheaval in Eastern Europe /

Abel (New York Times, NBC, and Stanford University) has produced a timely snapshot of East Europe on the brink of system change. Based on years of news work in the region and on good interviews conducted in 1988 in almost every East European country, Abel's account is light on history and analysis but gives readers a journalistic "feel" of system breakdown and failed experiments. The author covers the drama of 1989 from news accounts but just barely gets in a little material from late 1989. His coverage of Yugoslavia, where he was once stationed, is probing and frightening, pointing to breakup. His coverage of Romania and Bulgaria is much too brief. Abel underanticipates the sweeping nature of free elections and regime change, but books such as this are always a little too early. Abel's account is far more coherent and gives better, richer background than The Collapse of Communism, the compilation of New York Times stories ed. by B. Gwertzman and M. Kaufman, (1990), which covers the same time period but includes the Soviet Union and China as well as East Europe. Abel's book could be used as supplemental reading in introductory comparative courses whose instructors suddenly find East Europe an interesting topic. For lower-division undergraduates, community college students, and general readers. -M. G. Roskin, Lycoming College

Abel, a former New York Times and NBC journalist and Dean of Columbia's School of Journalism now on the faculty at Stanford, tries to describe what has been ``going on'' to cause the recent political turmoil from the Baltic to the Balkans. Unfortunately, as if writing a piece for the evening news, Abel utilizes ``sound bite'' sentences, offering little more than what one would have read in a good newspaper during 1989-90. Somewhat more interesting are Chapters 8-11, in which Abel makes more analytical observations, including a reminder that the transition to democratic, market-oriented systems will involve dislocations and sacrifices. This is not a scholarly volume nor one for college classes; it may have appeal for a general reader. For a more solid work on this subject, wait for the update of J.F. Brown's Eastern Europe and Communist Rule (Duke Univ. Pr., 1988), scheduled to be published in the spring of 1991. --Daniel Nelson, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.