
AUCK OUT OF STOCK
WGTN IN STOCK
Pages:
320
Published:
May 2025
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Imprint
Vintage
ISBN:
9781529920987
A gripping reconstruction of the daring escape to freedom of hundreds of East Germans in the summer of 1989 and how it led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable- they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain - and held a picnic. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German 'holiday-makers' had made their way to the border, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The stage was set for the greatest border breach in Cold War history. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union - the so-called end of history - all would flow from what happened next. Drawing on dozens of original interviews with those involved, Matthew Longo reconstructs this world-shaping event and its tumultuous aftermath.
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable- they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain - and held a picnic. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German 'holiday-makers' had made their way to the border, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The stage was set for the greatest border breach in Cold War history. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union - the so-called end of history - all would flow from what happened next. Drawing on dozens of original interviews with those involved, Matthew Longo reconstructs this world-shaping event and its tumultuous aftermath.
$33.00