Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 Hardback - 2012

Media reviews

Finalist, Lionel Gelber Prize (2013)

“Anne Applebaum captures this world with a cast of characters full of human weaknesses and ambiguity, neither caricatured heroes nor villains, but real people making daily compromises with a fickle and dangerous state. . . . A highly readable and human account. . . . [An] important and beautifully written book.”
—Globe and Mail
 
“A masterful study of how Eastern Europe wound up under [the] Soviet Union’s heel. . . . Magisterial .”
—Calgary Herald
 
“In Iron Curtain, Anne Applebaum captures the demeaning claustrophobia of Soviet-dominated regimes in Central Europe after 1945. With devastating precision, Applebaum documents the subordination of every autonomous social force in these countries by a paranoid and greedy power. Rarely has the fragility of liberalism been more deftly portrayed.”
—Jury Citation, Lionel Gelber Prize (2013)
 
“Applebaum is the ideal author for such a vast project . . . she gives human texture to the well-documented historic record by giving voice to aging witnesses and illuminating previously buried material.”
—Toronto Star
 
“Applebaum evokes the tragic plight of Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. She brilliantly reconstructs what life was like in the various totalitarian states; she has produced a superb historical narrative.”  
—Winnipeg Free Press