Tag: Geert Mak

Aid Worker Shashlik

From Geert Mak’s visit to Sarajevo in 1999: Batinic leans over and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Tell me, Geert, honestly: what kind of people are you sending us anyway? The ones at the top are usually fine. But otherwise, with only a few exceptions, the people I have to deal with are third-class …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/02/19/aid-worker-shashlik/

Sentence of the Day

Describing some events in the last months of 1989: Meanwhile, an unknown KGB agent in Dresden, Vladimir Putin, had tried to pile so many documents into a burning stove that the thing exploded In Europe, by Geert Mak, p.718 I’m nearing the end of the book, and it’s living up to my initial impression. More, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/02/16/sentence-of-the-day-2/

Premature Evaluation: In Europe

Less than 10 percent of the way into the book (to be fair, my edition weighs in at just under 900 pages), I’m liking In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century by Geert Mak a great deal, and looking forward to the rest. In 1999, Mak was commissioned by a Dutch newspaper to travel around …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/12/15/premature-evaluation-in-europe/