Postwar
The first truly European history of contemporary Europe, from Lisbon to Leningrad, based on research in six languages, covering 34 countries across 60 years, using a great deal of material from newly available sources. The book integrates international relations, domestic politics, ideas, social change, economic development, and culture--high and low--into a single grand narrative. Every country has its chance to play the lead, and although the big themes are handled--including the cold war, the love/hate relationship with America, cultural and economic malaise and rebirth, and the myth and reality of unification--none of them is allowed to overshadow the rich pageant that is the whole.--From publisher description.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
15mentions
14people
2011–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Seems we're fairly divided here between "audiobooks are for fiction" and "they work great as learning resource".
How about a slight tangent / challenge: Try to give a few examples of "which" audiobooks/podcasts/lectures are in Your own personal Top 3 or so (and maybe why).
My personal kickoff (I'm mostly in the fiction / "I need narrative" camp):
1. "The Poet's Corner" by John Lithgow (narrated by himself). This book probably converted me to even prefer audiobooks over regular paper / ebooks. Lithgow is a wonderful actor and in case of poetry, interpretation matters as much as the text itself. And the selection of different actors he brings in would be hard to beat even if it was done by a major Hollywood studio.
2. Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor, narrated by Ray Porter. If You like SF and haven't yet tried anything that's been narrated by Porter, please do yourself a favor and check his name out. I'll wait. The list is worth it.
3. Postwar by Tony Judt, narrated by Ralph Cosham. This one convinced me that what I need in an audiobooks is a narrative, but it does not necessarily need to be fiction. I'm a bity of a history nerd and reading one of the major works of 20th century in an audio form was the final straw that convinced me that audiobooks work great even for some non-fiction cases.
Basically, whenever I see I have a chunk of 30+ minutes of time when I "can" get away with running on autopilot and devoting part of my attention to listening (in my case - whenever I am cycling / running training, commutes, highway driving etc.), I now have the option of reading at the same time.
- I'm glad to hear that "Postwar" by Judt has a great audio recording, as I've read that the is book highly recommended by academic historians. This puts it next on my listening list (other books on my list about the 20th Century include "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes and "Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze" by Harmsen).
I'm struggling to think of a top three list from audiobooks alone in terms of memorability and enjoyment, but I can list a few that had a measurable impact on my life.
1. "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami, narrated by Ray Porter (coincidentally, also the narrator for the Bobiverse book you mentioned). This was a major influence of increasing my running volume and moving on to a more intense intermediate middle-distance program, and his experiences also gave me the motivation to push through discomfort in running and certain parts of life when necessary (with the ideas that "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional," and that even world-class elite runners have days when they don't feel like training, but they go out and do so anyway).
2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, narrated by Sissy Spacek. This reading wasn't required by my school growing up, but I've wanted to read this book for several years due to its great reputation. The audiobook version helped me finally enjoy the book over a month or so. I still remember Atticus Finch's quote that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view [...] until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it," and the idea helped navigate through some complicated negotiations and social situations at various times.
3. Various other classics (sneaking a bit around the limit of a top three). The audiobook version of Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" was an influence that led to an increased interest with space exploration and astronomy, and readings of Huxley's "Brave New World" and Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" helped me better appreciate the damaging effects of excessive escapism with entertainment, versus choosing efforts that require more struggle and difficulty.
I've also become more informed through listenings to Carreyrou's "Bad Blood" about the fall of Theranos, and Quinones's "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic," though classic literature has interestingly been typically more relevant to my day-to-day life than non-fiction books so far, with the exception of certain memoirs such as Murakami's.
- Postwar by Tony Judt. Published in 2005, it covers 1945 Postwar Europe to ~2005. Good coverage of not just the major Western European countries like the UK, Germany, and France, but attention is paid to the Eastern European countries and Soviet Union. The US of course comes into the picture at parts, but the book is firmly focused on Europe. I found the economic development, political attitudes and party shifts, and the coverage of the Soviet Union and countries behind the iron curtain.
I am looking for a follow up and may read Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, Stalin by Kotkin, or The Free World by Mendand. Suggestions appreciated
- /s, I assume? (you never know!)
Having read a couple of Cold War histories, most recently Tony Judt's excellent Postwar, I learned that what's often missing from American pop-level summaries is the work put in by the people behind the Iron Curtain to bring it down -- for examples, the Polish Catholics and union members, and the Czech dissidents such as Vaclav Havel.
Generally American pop-level accounts like to emphasize American agency in what happened.
- The Soviet intelligence apparatus spent a good deal of time and effort post-1945 ensuring that pretty much every state in Eastern and Central Europe would be dominated by the local communist party, parties which largely took direction from Moscow itself. In some places, like Poland, the process began even earlier when the war was still ongoing. The idea that they wouldn't have done so if Communist governments reigned in France and Italy is laughable.
Read Postwar, by Tony Judt. It's a pretty good roundup of what happened in Europe during the post-war era, including the start of the Cold War.
- Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography (multiple volumes) (idolised by Conan O'Brien see https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/style/conan-obrien-robert... - “I’m a fan to a disturbing level.”)
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
Paris 1919 and The War that Ended Peace - Margaret McMillan
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
Origins of Political Order: Francis Fukuyama - how politics + the state developed. Interesting contrast of Asia/China vs Europe/UK.
How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region Book by Joe Studwel - fascinating history of the tactics east Asian countries adopted to grow post wwII
