Author Description

Nearly a century ago, in the wake of global conflict, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats worried that “the centre cannot hold” in a world where “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Stan Persky’s Letter from Berlin, dispatches written from the reconfigured centre of Post-Cold War Europe, presents a portrait of the political and cultural present that examines those faltering convictions and dangerously passionate intensities. This series of vivid essays chronicles the issues of our time – from terrorism to Trump – and reflects on the larger cultural context in which politics unfolds – from “fake news” to questions about “truth,” “language and reality,” and our “selves” in an Age of Selfies. The essays specifically examine terrorist attacks in Paris, Berlin and Orlando, Florida as well as the ideologies that inspire them; the rise of populist right-wing movements in Europe and America; and the splintering of the European Union. Letter from Berlin considers the refugee crisis created by the Syrian War and the effects it has had – the creation of Germany’s “welcoming” asylum policy and the xenophobic backlash provoked by that policy. It probes the problems of neoliberalism and economic austerity as seen in depression-ridden Greece. And it interprets Britain’s decision to leave the EU (“Brexit”), and looks at the “numbers and narratives” that explain how and why Donald Trump became president of the United States. The essays offer a spirited cultural defense of the imperilled “centre” through portraits of key 20th century writers and thinkers, such as Susan Sontag, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Albert Camus. A wide-ranging survey of current cultural phenomena, from the films of Steven Spielberg and Paolo Sorrentino to the Cold War thrillers of John le Carré, to the “identity politics” of college campuses, provide a larger context in which to understand the new political conditions of the 21st century. All of this is illuminated by philoso