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The Vanished Kingdom: Travels Through the History of Prussia
James Charles Roy
Westview Books, 1999
There may, for all I know, be an entire literary genre that could be described as "traveling histories." This book is, however, this reviewer's first experience with it, and I found it delightful. James Charles Roy has travelled from place to place in what was once Prussia, often camping out in the countryside, and telling of the ghostlike bleakness there today after 55 years of socialist suffocation and cultural obliteration. His observations and interviews of old timers pass seamlessly into a recounting of the history of the particular place, a process through which he is able to tell coherently the various historical episodes in Prussian history. Midway through the book, it struck me that the transitions from present to past had hardly seemed like transitions at all, causing me to go back to look at how he had achieved the synthesis. The answer is that there are no transitions - just an easy flow into history-telling.
Roy's other books on European history have been Book-of-theMonth Club and History Book Club selections. With The Vanished Kingdom, he...