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Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft. By Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. 493p. $35.00.
Andrei S. Markovits, University of California, Santa Cruz
In terms of any of the numerous epistemologies and methodologies that currently constitute the motley fields of comparative politics or international relations, this book is less than ephemeral. However, as a work of diplomatic history it is nothing short of monumental. By virtue of having been active participants in the innermost circle of American decision making during that fateful year between September/October 1989 (the immediate prelude to the Berlin Wall's opening on November 9) and Germany's official unification on October 3,1990, the authors offer us a gem of a study in two related ways. First, they draw on a bevy of primary documents from U.S., Russian, and German sources that have hitherto eluded everybody else and which, alas, will remain, at least in part, elusive to mere mortals for years, maybe even decades. Second, to the authors' great credit, they have succeeded in harnessing the richness of their detailed data to write a veritable pageturner. Anyone interested in recent politics (as opposed to political science) will find reading this book a truly rewarding experience.
The book has no real argument. Far from offering the overarching pattern of a forest, this volume does not even provide the particularity of the proverbial trees. Instead, its beauty lies in the leafy details of singular events that changed the world in which we live. Some of this study's most fascinating contributions lie buried in its more than 100 pages of single-spaced and small-print footnotes that convey the obvious meticulousness of the research. Simply put, this book offers an insider's look at the innermost...