We, the People by Timothy Garton Ash (Penguin, £7.99 in UK)

The 10th anniversary of the fall of Communism has brought a spate of revisitations and reassessments

The 10th anniversary of the fall of Communism has brought a spate of revisitations and reassessments. Here, however, is the original of the species, republished as a three-volume trilogy along with The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (£9.99) and The Uses of Adversity (£8.99). It's hard to imagine that Garton Ash's lucid, intelligent and vividly personal observation of those heady days in the autumn of 1989 will ever be surpassed as, in We the People, he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work in dusty offices alongside Havel, Walesa and the rest. The Polish book is a more detailed tracing of the exciting rise of Solidarity, The Uses of Adversity a balanced examination of matters Mitteleuropean. Anyone interested in the history, not to mention the future, of Europe should have all three.

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace is a former Irish Times journalist