Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft Book

This book is an analysis on the diplomatic moves and other factors involved in the negotiations that lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This was a remarkable event that was surprisingly quick and easy to do. Nobody knew how it happened, but suddenly, almost magically, every little or big problem that could have aroused to avoid the final result just disappeared, and in the end the wall was gone in a few weeks. It was like magical history.

I ended up reading this book -about a topic that is very difficult for me to get interested in- because I took a history class with professor Zelikow and it turns out that he is a remarkable communicator and a skilled speaker. I thought it would be interesting for me, as a private experiment, to see if he could keep me engaged in history reading, which is a topic that my brain is inundated with antibodies against.

I have to be truthful: I read the book aright, but I picked up only a percentage of it. And this is not any Prof. Zewlicow guilt. Far from it. Turns out that my antibodies are stronger than I thought. However, he managed to keep me interested by means of excellent writing that I certainly payed a lot of attention to, because I wanted to pick up at least some skill. I hope I succeeded at least in that.

This is my favorite cartoon in the book. This book contains a wealth of graphic documents that make it more than worthy to pick up:



This is the cover of the book I read:



Table of contents:



The first page of the excellent preface. I really like the fluency and clarity of this author:



A complete list of the authors in this historic happening:



This is the introduction. It is so engaging that it is worthy of a deep reading. I just loved this piece:







The first page of the work. Let's start from the beginning:



Some photos in the book:











An interesting description on how NATO was a key factor in the whole process:



The last page of the work:



The epilogue. Another invaluable piece. I absolutely enjoyed it:









In the end, a lovely book with a professional voice, written by a very charismatic professor. Loved it, even though I understood only a small fraction of the whole thing.

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