Judy Dempsey
Nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor in chief of Strategic Europe
Fiction
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. An unremittingly tough and emotional novel anchored on the economic implications of mine closures and social dislocation in Scotland that took place during the 1980s. The novel is centered on a small boy growing up in Glasgow who endures all the consequences.
Politics
Posttraumatische Souveränität (Posttraumatic Sovereignty) by Jarolsław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura. A set of essays that explains why now the issue of sovereignty in Poland and other Central European countries is linked to occupation. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has reawaken historical trauma. Self-defense is becoming central to their policies. Do Western European countries understand why? I don’t think so.
Podcast, film, or music
Andras Schiff playing Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier. It was revolutionary at the time when he wrote the two sets, one in 1722, the other circa 1742. The composition consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard. I heard Schiff play them all last December and this January at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. What a performance. Schiff alternated between the Steinway and Bösendorfer grand pianos.
Guilty pleasure
The month of June. Every year. In the evening. I pick beautiful flowers, especially sweet pea that protrude through the fences of well-tended gardens onto the public space.
Dominik P. Jankowski
Deputy Permanent Representative of Poland to NATO
Fiction
1984 by George Orwell. In 2024 we should not forget what happens when the worst-case scenario kicks in.
Politics
Inheriting the Bomb by Mariana Budjeryn. A fascinating story about how Ukraine could have become a nuclear power and why the path of nuclear disarmament was the right choice for Kyiv.
Podcast, film, or music
Barbie. I finally need to be able to judge who wins the Oppenheimer vs Barbie battle.
Guilty pleasure
La Bombe by Didier Alcante, LF Bollée, and Denis Rodier. A comic book about the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in French. A perfect “guilty pleasure” triad.
Gabriele Woidelko
Head of the history and politics department at the Körber Stiftung, Hamburg
Fiction
Sergei Lebedev’s A Present Past. Titan and other Chronicles. A fascinating, masterly written collection of short stories. Each of them makes you understand how neglected and silenced legacies of crime, war, dictatorship, and guilt resonate in individuals and societies in the Soviet and so-called post-Soviet world.
Politics
Tara Zahra’s Against the World. Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics between the two World Wars. A thought-provoking study on the rise and patterns of the anti-globalism movement in the 1920s and 1930s. If you ever thought globalization is inevitable or even unstoppable, this book teaches you the opposite. It also shows how anti-globalism has been and still is an ideology shared both on the far right and the far left of the political spectrum.
Podcast, film, or music
Fazil Say. Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas. Music clearly has a healing power. Listening to Fazil Say playing Beethoven’s sonatas in his very particular empathetic, sensitive but strong way of makes me forget about the multiple crises around us. At least for a while.
Guilty pleasure
Vanessa Kimbell’s Food for Thought. This cookbook gives classical dishes and cuisine a twist towards a more ethical and more sustainable way of cooking and eating. Beautiful photographs and well-written stories around food, ingredients and their production. An absolute must for responsible foodies.
Guy Chazan
Berlin bureau chief at the Financial Times
Fiction
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. A bewitching (and deeply disturbing) love story set in the last years of the GDR that just won the International Booker prize. The way she intertwines the political and the personal is just brilliant—much more subtle and allusive than other fictional treatments of this period.
Politics
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 by Benny Morris.
Quite heavy-going at times, but one of the best books I’ve read on the Israel-Palestine conflict and one of the best explanations for why it remains so intractable to this day.
Podcast, film, or music
There is a new crop of German political podcasts that I would really recommend: the Politico’s Berlin Playbook and Table Today with Michael Bröcker and Helene Bubrowski. Essential daily listening for German politics junkies.
Guilty pleasure
Stand-up comic Laura Ramoso’s TikTok videos about her German mother. Hilarious. The medium’s made for her. (lau_ramoso).
Florence Gaub
Director of the research division at the NATO Defense College
Fiction
Le Mage du Kremlin (The Wizard of the Kremlin) by Giuliano da Empoli. An imaginary account of a Putin advisor—but so credible many mistake it for reality.
Politics
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie. The head of research of Our World in Data dispels many doomsday myths about climate change. A soothing read.
Podcast, film, or music
I am taking a deep dive into South Korean science fiction these days—The Silent Sea, Jung_E—it’s time travel and travel in one!
Guilty pleasure
Aaron James’s Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Enquiry into a Life of Meaning. An amusing beach read that makes you look clever on and off the board.
Michael Z. Wise
Co-founder of New Vessel Press
Fiction
Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte. An autobiographical novel written by the consummate unreliable narrator—an Italian foreign correspondent who was an untroubled fascist reporting from World War II’s Eastern front. Laden with repellent but indelible scenes of both human cruelty and aesthetic splendor.
Politics
Hässlichkeit (Ugliness) by Afghan-born artist Moshtari Hilal is an unforgettable book that my publishing house New Vessel Press will bring out in English translation in February 2025, about how ugliness is used to foment hatred. It’s a unique, important work in an era when the internet and other media ramp up pressure on everyone to meet popular ideals of appearance.
Podcast, film, or music
Io Capitano. An illuminating film about the extraordinary risks taken by Africans seeking a better life in Western Europe. Filmed in Senegal, Morocco, and Italy—directed by Matteo Garrone—it’s often tough to watch, but essential to understand the tragic realities of African migration.
Guilty pleasure
The film Coup de chance, Woody Allen’s latest glamorized vision of European life, this one involving an extramarital affair in a seemingly flawless Paris.
Ulrike Franke
Senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations
Politics
Byron Tau’s Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State. As someone who worries quite a lot about surveillance capitalism (a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff in her groundbreaking book with the same title), I thought that little could shock me regarding the growing surveillance state of the Western world. Unfortunately, this was proven false by Tau’s book. Tau paints a fascinating picture of the U.S. ecosystem of technology development, people who are simply out to make money, and, increasingly, the state and the military, all of which together are building an ever tighter net of surveillance. A must-read for every informed citizen—and hopefully a nudge for some European journalists or researchers to research this topic in a European context.
Podcast, film, or music
The podcast Le Collimateur—Le Casque et La Plume. For the French-speakers, I recommend this insightful podcast on all things defense, military, and geopolitics. Host Alexandre Jublin invites researchers and practitioners to discuss French and international security and defence. Recently, Le Collimateur has added a debate format in which a group of experts (including yours truly) debate the issues of the moment.
Guilty pleasure
Nothing is better to escape the world—while still thinking about it and its possible futures—than science fiction. Read Iain M. Bank’s Culture series for something truly great: future fiction which isn’t dystopian but rather utopian, and still interesting.
Cornelius Adebahr
Nonresident fellow at Carnegie Europe
Fiction
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, a captivating story of a groundbreaking female pilot, which not only grips with two stories (past and present) but also provides a surprising finale that befits a character who defies all odds as a woman pioneer at a time when only men would fly. Most convincingly, however, it had me check the internet to see whether this was really fiction, after all.
Politics
The Italians by Luigi Barzini, a 1964 English-language classic written for an international audience. It is best read with some distance: sixty years ago, accepted morals were quite different, and the country has indeed changed since then. Yet, his pointed, unflattering questions about the Italians’ national psyche remain valid, and his analysis of Benito Mussolini as a showman (whom he had personally known) is riveting.
Podcast, film, or music
Little was I aware that I would reconnect to my favorite TV series from childhood days with The Fall Guy. The plot is very different, though, but told with speed, a dose of Hollywood’s new self-deprecating irony, and the occasional shooting of the shooting going wrong. Wait for the cameo appearance of Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, my heroes from back in the day …
Guilty pleasure
Aperitivo in una piazza di Roma 🍹.
Matti Maasikas
Advisor on strategic issues to the secretary general of the European External Action Service
Fiction
Any of Kjell Westö’s Helsinki-novels, of which Where We Once Walked (2006) is a particular treat. The prominent Swedish-speaking Finnish writer gives the history of Finland and of its capital a life that fascinates over generations. His latest, Molly & Henry (so far available only in Swedish and Finnish) brings the reader to the dark days of the Winter War and the ensuing interim period of 1939-1941.
Politics
Les Aveuglés by Sylvie Kauffmann, so far available in French and Estonian only. A meticulous account of the mistakes committed by Western leaders in relations with Russia after the end of the Cold War. Necessary reading not in order to put blame but in order to know which mistakes to avoid when Russia will have been defeated in Ukraine.
Podcast, film, or music
The Oscar-winning documentary 20 Days In Mariupol. A very painful-to-watch visualization of the suffering Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war brought and is still bringing to the people of Ukraine.
Guilty pleasure
Watching snooker on Eurosport. A rare sport where one can perform at top level for decades. I’m all for the Class of 1992 (who knows, knows).
Felix Krawatzek
Senior researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin
Fiction
Accompanying a new research focus on Estonia I recently finished Sofi Oksanen’s Purge. A breathtaking account of the trauma of deportation and return that can be encountered in many Estonian family histories and remains visible in the country to this day.
Politics
I am always impressed with how Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt manage to combine comparative historical analysis with pertinent interpretations of present-day politics. In Tyranny of the Minority the authors show how a demographically shrinking and increasingly radical minority accounts for the turn against democratic institutions that we have witnessed it in the United States over the last decade with implications for other democratic institutions across the world.
Podcast, film, or music
C’è ancora domani (There’s Still Tomorrow) is a wonderful dramatic comedy and social history of post-1945 Italy. Domestic violence and discrimination do not at first glance make for a promising movie night, but in a surprising twist, this film ends very much on a high note and opens plenty of room for discussion.
Guilty pleasure
Catching up on all the unopened episodes of La Tribune des critiques de disques is high up on my list. This is an amazing podcast in which a set of experts evaluate recordings of one piece of classical music without knowing who the artists are, a bit like wine tasting for music lovers.
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