Timothy Garton Ash

One of the great political writers of our time offers a manifesto for global free speech in the digital age Never in human history was there such a chance for freedom of expression. If we have Internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like and potentially reach an audience of millions. Never was there a time when the evils of unlimited speech flowed so easily across frontiers: violent intimidation, gross violations of privacy, tidal waves of abuse. A pastor burns a Koran in Florida and UN officials die in Afghanistan. Drawing on a lifetime of writing about dictatorships and dissidents, Timothy Garton Ash argues that in this connected world that he calls cosmopolis, the way to combine freedom and diversity is to have more but also better free speech. Across all cultural divides we must strive to agree on how we disagree. He draws on a thirteen-language global online project--freespeechdebate.com--conducted out of Oxford University and devoted to doing just that. With vivid examples, from his personal experience of China's Orwellian censorship apparatus to the controversy around Charlie Hebdo to a very English court case involving food writer Nigella Lawson, he proposes a framework for civilized conflict in a world where we are all becoming neighbors.

Ten Principles for a Connected World

Free Speech

In an account of Cold War espionage and treachery, the author describes his discovery that the East German secret police had compiled a secret file on his activities and of his efforts to track down the truth about that file

A Personal History

The File

Offers a firsthand account of the peaceful revolutions that swept Communist governments aside in Eastern Europe

The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague

The Magic Lantern

A Personal History of Europe

Homelands

The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague

Leading political writer Timothy Garton Ash presents ten guiding principles for freedom of expression in the digital age, which are the result of a unique global conversation on the website: www.freespeechdebate.com.

At the start of the 21st century, the world plunged into crisis. What began as an attack on the West by Osama bin Laden soon became a dramatic confrontation between Europe and America. Britain has found itself painfully split, because it stands with one foot across the Atlantic and the other across the Channel. The English, in particular, are hopelessly divided between a Right that argues our place is with America, not Europe, and a Left that claims the opposite. This is today's English civil war. Both sides tell us we must choose. In this powerful new work Timothy Garton Ash, one of our leading political writers, explains why we cannot, need not and must not choose between Europe and America.

Free World

In 1980, workers in Gdansk won from their communist rulers the right to form independent trade unions. In this eyewitness account, Ash describes the defiance of the strikers, the emergence of Lech Walesa and the declaration of martial law.

Solidarity

The Polish Revolution

Eine persönliche Geschichte

Europa

Britain may not be divided physically, but it lives culturally, economically and socially in a constant tension between Europe and America. And it's divided politically between a Right which argues that our place is with America, not Europe, and a Left which claims the opposite. This is today's English civil war. Both sides tell us we must choose between Europe and America. But how can we choose, when Britain has two faces pointing in opposite directions? Garton Ash argues that the beginning of national wisdom is to accept that this is who we are, that Britain faces both ways. What follows is, he says, a liberation - and a challenge. In this stimulating new book, Garton Ash examines how this has happened, and argues that Britain should resist choosing between Europe and America, but embrace a new role in harmony with both, and that instead of destructively bickering as we have for decades, we should be concentrating on grander and more durable aspirations for political freedom.

Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time

A Personal History of Europe in Our Time

The author was present in four countries - Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia - at cardinal moments in their emancipation during 1989 and describes the events.

The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin & Prague

We the People

A brilliant eyewitness and analyst, Timothy Garton Ash in this book offers a gripping account of the Polish shipyard workers who defied their communist rulers in 1980. He describes the emergence of the improbable leader Lech Walesa, the ensuing tumult that culminated in martial law, and -- for this updated edition -- the fate of the Solidarity movement in subsequent years. Book jacket.

A selection from The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash’s classic first-person history of the Revolution of ’89 and the end of the Cold War—an on-the-ground glimpse of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “In the beginning was the Wall itself.” So writes matchless chronicler and observer Timothy Garton Ash on the strange life and stranger death of the Wall that divided two worlds. Garton Ash takes the reader with him as he walks through the Wall and across no-man’s land in early November of 1989, where as recently as that February a man attempting to cross had been shot dead. But November 9 ushers in a new world. Garton Ash introduces us to the East Berliners lining up for the “greeting money” offered at banks; the newfound wanderers looking for the ferry to England; and the chaotic, intoxicating political atmosphere sweeping through the reunited city. This is a vivid and enduring picture of a defining moment in history, when a wall came tumbling down. An eBook short.

Berlin: Wall's End

Amounting to a history of Central Europe after the collapse of soviet control, Ash joins the East Germans in their decisive vote for unification, visiting the former leader in prison, accompanies the Poles on their roller-coaster ride to democracy, travels through the killing fields of Kosovo and more.

Essays, Sketches and Despatches from Europe in the 1990s

History of the Present

'A moving love letter to Europe' Lea Ypi, author of Free Homelands is a stunning blend of contemporary history, investigative reporting and intimate memoir by our greatest writer about Europe. Drawing on half a century of travel and thinking, Homelands tells the story of Europe since its emergence from wartime hell in 1945: how it slowly recovered and rebuilt, liberated and united to come close to the ideal of a Europe 'whole, free and at peace'. And then faltered. Timothy Garton Ash has spent a lifetime studying Europe, and this deeply felt book is full of vivid experiences: from his father's memories of D-Day to interviewing Polish dockers, Albanian guerrillas in the mountains of Kosovo, and angry teenagers in the poorest quarters of Paris, as well as advising prime ministers, chancellors and presidents. Homelands is at once a living, breathing history of a period of unprecedented progress, a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong and an urgent call to the citizens of this great old continent to understand and defend what we have collectively achieved. 'The right book for Europe, at the right time' Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

“We, the free, face a daunting opportunity. Previous generations could only dream of a free world. Now we can begin to make it.” In his welcome alternative to the rampant pessimism about Euro-American relations, award-winning historian Timothy Garton Ash shares an inspiring vision for how the United States and Europe can collaborate to promote a free world. At the start of the twenty-first century, the West has plunged into crisis. Europe tries to define itself in opposition to America, and America increasingly regards Europe as troublesome and irrelevant. What is to become of what we used to call “the free world”? Part history, part manifesto, Free World offers both a scintillating assessment of our current geopolitical quandary and a vitally important argument for the future of liberty and the shared values of the West.

America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West

For forty-five years Europe was divided, and at the center of that divided continent lay a divided Germany. Throughout that time West German politicians were trying to reunite their sundered country, even as they performed an intricate diplomatic minuet with their European -- and, particularly, their American -- allies and East Germany's Soviet sponsors.

Germany and the Divided Continent

In Europe's Name

The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that capture history in the making, written by an author who was witness to some of the most remarkable moments that marked the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Timothy Garton Ash was there in Warsaw, on 4 June, when the communist government was humiliated by Solidarity in the first semi-free elections since the Second World War. He was there in Budapest, twelve days later, when Imre Nagy - thirty-one years after his execution - was finally given his proper funeral. He was there in Berlin, as the Wall opened. And most remarkable of all, he was there in Prague, in the back rooms of the Magic Lantern theatre, with Václav Havel and the members of Civic Forum, as they made their 'Velvet Revolution'.

Timothy Garton Ash

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