Customer Reviews

Exit into History: A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe

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After studying the politics and history of Eastern Europe extensively as an undergraduate in college, I read this book and found it simply marvelous, for in all the history and political science books yo are given fact upon fact, but until I read this book I didn't know what it was like to actually be there. She vividly portrays the countries of the region from an ordinary person's perspective, the sights, the sounds, the feeling in the air of these countries. It can be read as an introduction to Eastern Europe, the avid student, or even the educated expert. It can also be enjoyable as simply leisure reading.

Eva Hoffman, back among her Polish homeland and other former Iron Curtained nations, offers a thoughtful look at the years just after the breakdown of the wall. Not a travelogue so much as an extended series of conversations with usually well-spoken people much like Hoffman herself. Not a book for those seeking Romany flavor, hotel mishaps, and quaint lore. She largely conveys her impressions and ideas in a style reminding me of essays for the New Yorker or the Sunday magazine of her own employer The New York Times.

Her reflections on Havel's Czech Republic, the still lurking oppressiveness of Romania post-Ceausescu, the Bulgarian-Soviet aura, and the Hungarian cynicism mesh nicely with her own Polish rather aristocratic attitudes (not by birth but by predilection?).

While the report's well-written, it does lapse into an over-reliance on the chat in the salon, so to speak, rather than on the street. You feel as if she, naturally attracted to educated dissidents for the most part, wished to relate their stories to us at the expense of a conventional tour of the countries she visits. For instance, little of Slovakia appears, and the sights she describes stick less in the mind than the ideas she ponders.

Fine, but fair warning for anyone expecting another Patrick Leigh Fermor (pre-WWII) or Brian Hall (Stealing from a Deep Place, 1988--Romania/Hungary/Bulgaria cycled through from an American's p-o-v). A useful introduction to how politics inevitably must give way to the ordinary, the human, the lived experience. Although she may differ from Havel, Hoffman provides a beneficial Western counterpart to his own thinking. 3 1/2 stars.

I'm preparing to move to Romania, and read this book to give me an idea of the way things were over there a few years ago. I greatly enjoyed this book. It was well written, and thought-provoking. Every now and then the author would lapse into excessive use of "textbook speech", but for the most part I appreciated the way she wrote. I also appreciated the way she used various stories to get her information across. For someone with little to no interest in this area, this would not be a good book to start with. However, I found it very readable, and highly recommend it.

This book is based on two trips to Eastern and Central Europe undertaken by the author, Eva Hoffman, one year apart in the years immediately following the fall of Communism in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (before being split into the Czech and Slovak Republics, Romania, and Bulgaria. It compares and contrasts the atmospheres of these countries based on the author's interviews, mostly with writers, journalists, and a few politicians.The book is somewhat interesting but naturally lacks perspective and should not be considered in the realm of history. In writing style and content it does not measure up in any way with her excellent book about the history of Polish Jewry and its relationships with its Polish neighborhoods, entitled Shtetl. The latter book I recommend heartily; this one not at all.

As a frequent visitor to Eastern (Central) Europe, I found the book full of insights into those countries,with accurate cultural comments. Worth reading for information or preparation for a trip.

I read Exit into History for a first-year history course. Hoffman describes her journey through some Eastern European countries in excruciating detail, which made it difficult for me to find any major relevant themes. It's basically a travel journal. Hoffman is a good writer - her descriptions use an interesting range of words, and her sentences are pleasantly structured. I would recommend it to people who have a major interest in Poland, or who are like Hoffman herself: immigrants from Eastern Europe to North America. It's not a story type of book, so you have to be interested in the topic beforehand.