Retracing the Iron Curtain
A 3,000-Mile Journey Through the End and Afterlife of the Cold War
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Retracing the Iron Curtain
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Narrated by:
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Gerard McCarthy
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By:
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Timothy Phillips
About this listen
Initially a victory line where Allies met at the end of WWII, the Iron Curtain quickly became the front of a new kind of war. It divided Europe from north to south for forty-five years. Crossing it in either direction was always a political act; in many cases, it was a crime to even talk about doing so. New generations have grown up since these borders came down, freed from the restrictions of the Cold War era. But what has the Iron Curtain left in its wake?
Timothy Phillips travels its full 3,000-mile route to craft this new people's history of a defining twentieth-century conflict. Here, in the borderlands where a powerful clash of civilizations took form in concrete and barbed wire, he uncovers the remarkable stories of everyday people forever imprinted by life in the Curtain's shadow.
Some look back on the era with nostalgia, even affection, while others despise it, unable to forgive the decades of hardship their families and nations endured. A director recalls the night his movie premiered in East Germany—the very night the Berlin Wall fell. And a railroad worker recounts the hijacking of a passenger train from Czechoslovakia that breached the Curtain, granting those aboard immediate asylum in the West. These narratives, by turns harrowing and heartening, paint a vivid portrait of the new Europe that emerged from the ruins.
©2022 Timothy Phillips (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
With exclusive insider status as Nikita Khrushchev’s great grand-daughter, and an ex-pat living and reporting on Russia and the Soviet Union since 1993, Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler offer a poignant exploration of the largest country on Earth through their recreation of Vladimir Putin’s fabled New Year’s Eve speech planned across all 11 time zones.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Up to date assessment of Russia in 2019
- By Joseph C. Wilson on 04-10-19
By: Nina Khrushcheva, and others
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Erdogan Rising
- The Battle for the Soul of Turkey
- By: Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Narrated by: Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
Everyone has heard of Erdogan: Turkey’s bullish, mercurial president is the original postmodern populist. Around the world, other strongmen are now following the path that he has blazed. For the first time, Erdogan Rising tells the inside story of how a democracy on the fringe of Europe has succumbed to dictatorship. Hannah Lucinda Smith, Turkey correspondent with The Times of London, has witnessed all that has befallen Turkey and the wider region since the onset of the Arab Spring.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Overall fascinating profile of Erdogan’s Turkey
- By Saul M on 09-18-20
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The Berlin Wall
- By: Frederick Taylor
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 155
The appearance of a hastily constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse.
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2 out of 5 stars
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TEAR. DOWN. THIS. WALL
- By Simone on 05-23-13
By: Frederick Taylor
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Between Two Fires
- Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia
- By: Joshua Yaffa
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces listeners to some of the country’s most remarkable figures - from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians - who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stimulating
- By Amazon Customer on 03-16-20
By: Joshua Yaffa
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Why the Dutch Are Different
- A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands
- By: Ben Coates
- Narrated by: Ciaran Saward
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history, and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch Are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good Start, Then He Goes Dark
- By amazonnance on 12-17-21
By: Ben Coates
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Checkpoint Charlie
- The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- By: Iain MacGregor
- Narrated by: Dugald Bruce Lockhart
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Hard to follow
- By J.Brock on 03-07-21
By: Iain MacGregor
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Balkan Ghosts
- A Journey Through History
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 296
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 252
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 253
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Anti religious/anti catholic hit piece
- By Daniel Calvert on 05-04-21
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Germans and Europe
- A Personal Frontline History
- By: Peter Millar
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
Based on a lifetime living in and reporting on Germany and Central Europe, award-winning journalist and author Peter Millar tackles the fascinating and complex story of the people at the heart of our continent. Focussing on nine cities (only six of which are in the Germany of today), he takes us on a zigzag ride back through time via the fall of the Berlin Wall through the horrors of two world wars and the patchwork states of the Middle Ages to the splendour of Charlemagne and the fall of Rome.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the best books I have listened to on here
- By Shaun on 05-17-18
By: Peter Millar
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Hong Kong
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Hong Kong is the world’s most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful urban panorama of all. Through firsthand reportage, world-renowned travel writer Jan Morris takes us through the crowded streets of this enigmatic city, offering the most insightful and comprehensive study of Hong Kong thus far. She reviews Hong Kong’s early days as a British opium port controlled by pirates, cutthroats, and scoundrel tycoons, and looks ahead to the city’s future.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An interesting but mild disappointment
- By Jeanette Finan on 06-11-14
By: Jan Morris
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Afropean
- Notes from Black Europe
- By: Johny Pitts
- Narrated by: Johny Pitts
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
In the face of growing racial discrimination, anti-immigrant sentiment and the spectre of terrorism looming large over an economically stricken continent, Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities: too indelibly woven into Europe to identify with Africa and yet struggling with outdated ideas of what it means to be European.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Suzie M on 04-04-24
By: Johny Pitts
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Light and Shadow
- Memoirs of a Spy's Son
- By: Mark Colvin
- Narrated by: Mark Colvin
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Mark Colvin is a broadcasting legend. He is the voice of ABC Radio’s leading current affairs program PM; he was a founding broadcaster for the groundbreaking youth station Double J; he initiated The World Today program; and he’s one of the most popular and influential journalists in the twittersphere. Mark has been covering local and global events for more than four decades. He has reported on wars, royal weddings and everything in between. In the midst of all this he discovered that his father was an MI6 spy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Probably of most interest to Australian readers
- By Robyn on 04-12-17
By: Mark Colvin
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The Long Hangover
- Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past
- By: Shaun Walker
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating and fair book on Putin's Russia
- By MyPublicName on 02-16-18
By: Shaun Walker
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story5 out of 5 stars 118
In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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Invasion
- The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival
- By: Luke Harding
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
In a damning, inspiring, and breathtaking narrative of what is likely to be a turning point for Europe—and the world—Guardian correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Luke Harding reports firsthand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When, just before dawn on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a series of brutal attacks, Harding was there, on the ground in Kyiv. But this senseless violence was met with astounding resilience—from, among others, the country’s embattled president—and the courage of a people prepared to risk everything to preserve their nation’s freedom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pray For Ukraine
- By Tyler 963 on 12-03-22
By: Luke Harding
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Crucible
- The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924
- By: Charles Emmerson
- Narrated by: Charles Emmerson
- Length: 25 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
In Petrograd, a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to Siberia. A rancorous Russian exile returns to proclaim a workers' revolution. In America, black soldiers who have served their country in Europe demand their rights at home. An Austrian war veteran trained by the German army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews. A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk into a celebrity. An American reporter living the high life in Paris searches out a new literary style.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Splendid in all respects
- By Paul Custer on 02-11-20
By: Charles Emmerson
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The Nine Lives of Pakistan
- Dispatches from a Precarious State
- By: Declan Walsh
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis....
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Fascinating Look at a Troubled Country
- By Dipam on 07-11-21
By: Declan Walsh
What listeners say about Retracing the Iron Curtain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Big Al
- 03-31-24
Great story!
Very interesting approach to the iron curtain and how it affected day to day life.
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