New Books In Journalism

We like to think of countries as permanent fixtures. They aren’t. They come and go. In 1989, a place called the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East Germany, was going. It was never really an “ordinary” place. In the West but also the East; sovereign but not sovereign; German but not German; poor but rich. I could go on. It was the unnatural product of the Cold War, so when the Cold War ended it ended as well. But it didn’t just blink out of existence. Not at all. For a brief period–roughly from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989 to formal reunification in October, 1990–it continued to exist, a country that was alive and dead. Reporter Stevan Allen was lucky enough to be there and he has written an artful book about it–Roaming Ghostland: The Final Days of East Germany. At its center is a wonderful literary device: just as East Germany was passing out of existence, so too was an important phase in Allen’s life. The two narratives–that of the