Ash, Timothy Garton. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague. 1993. An exciting firsthand narrative of the collapse of the East Bloc in 1989 and 1990.
Cohen, Stephen F. Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. 2011. An up-to-date book by an acclaimed historian that challenges conventional interpretations of the rise and fall and aftermath of the Soviet Union.
Guha, Ramachandra. Environmentalism: A Global History. 2000. A powerful and readable overview of environmentalism that puts Europe in world context.
Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. 2003. Popular history at its best, a gripping account of the 1960s generation and 1968 across the globe.
McLeod, Hugh. The Religious Crisis of the 1960s. 2007. A comparative study of Western religion in decline.
Okey, Robin. The Demise of Communist East Europe: 1989 in Context. 2004. A measured overview of the collapse of the East Bloc that avoids accusatory Cold War rhetoric.
Pittaway, Mark. Eastern Europe, 1939–2000. 2004. A survey of east-central Europe from the start of World War II to the end of communism, with a welcome emphasis on social history.
Port, Andrew I. Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic. 2007. A penetrating analysis of popular support for communism in this major East Bloc country.
Reitan, Earl A. Tory Radicalism: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and the Transformation of Modern Britain, 1979–1997. 1997. Clear, concise, and very useful.
Ross, Kristin. May ’68 and Its Afterlives. 2004. An important book on the way contested memories continue to shape our understanding of France’s May Events.
Smith, Bonnie G. Global Feminisms Since 1945. 2000. A broadly cast and accessible overview of feminism after World War II that puts European and American movements in a global context.
Williams, Kieran. The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970. 1997. Explores the events of the Prague Spring and the political changes that followed the revolt.
Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. 2008. An in-depth account of Soviet leaders and elites during the Cold War.
DOCUMENTARIES
The Beatles Anthology (EMI Records, 1995). This series about the British rock band the Beatles includes clips of many of their songs as well as a detailed look at the lives of the artists.
My Perestroika (Robin Hessman, 2010). Documents the story of five individuals who were born in the Soviet Union and came of age during its collapse.
Vietnam’s Unseen War: Pictures from the Other Side (National Geographic, 2001). A look at the Vietnam War through the lenses of Vietnamese photographers.
FEATURE FILMS
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979). In this famous film, loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a special operations captain undertakes a secret mission into the jungle of Cambodia that reveals the cruelty and absurdity of the war in Vietnam.
The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd, 2011). A film about the life of Great Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who is renowned for her neoliberal policies in the 1980s.
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006). An East German secret agent spies on a prominent writer and his lover and becomes obsessed with their lives.
Man of Marble (Andrzej Wajda, 1977). By a noted Polish director, this film tells the story of the first decade of Communist rule in Poland through the experiences of a young bricklayer and a documentary film maker who seeks to make a film about the bricklayer’s life and times.
Omagh (Pete Travis, 2004). A dramatic film about the tragic 1998 bombing in Omagh by the Irish Republican Army.
WEB SITES
BBC News Special Report: The Thatcher Years in Statistics. An interactive Web site that allows users to compare and contrast various sets of economic and social statistics in Britain during the Thatcher years. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4447082.stm
Making the History of 1989. Primary sources, scholarly interviews, and case studies on the fall of communism in eastern Europe. chnm.gmu.edu/1989/
The Whole World Was Watching: An Oral History of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group consisting of interviews and a timeline of events in 1968. www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/index.html