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Nomadland: a reading list for the Oscar-winning film

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Reading lists

An editor’s guide to the VINTAGE European Classics series

In Europe (Vintage Classic Europeans Series)

Following the success of the Vintage Classics Russians series, these are equally gorgeous editions of must-have European classics

Fascinating, informative, sometimes exhilarating, often painful, and quite impossible to summarise... This is a splendidly panoramic picture of our common European home, a book to read through and then to dip into frequently... I thoroughly recommend his book

A broader travelling history of the whole of Europe's 20th century

His genius as a historian is his instinct for human stories... At moments in this monumental work... Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had

Part masterpiece... breathtaking invention

An ingenious geographical-chronological structure... It's impossible not to get drawn into this book -

Geert Mak is a journalist and historian, and the internationally acclaimed author of In Europe, In America, Amsterdam and The Bridge. He is one of the Netherlands’ bestselling authors, has twice been awarded Historian of the Year and his books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

The Vintage Classics Europeans series - with covers provided by textile design firm Wallace Sewell, these are must-have editions of European masterpieces, celebrating the warp and weft of a shared literary treasury. 
 
 
In 1999, journalist and historian Geert Mak criss-crossed the continent in the simple yet monumental quest to trace European twentieth-century history as the world slipped into the twenty-first. In Europe is a dazzling account of that journey, and combines the larger story of Europe with intimate, vivid detail. It is also now a poignant reminder that the European project was then and is now a unprecedented experiment; that we still have ‘a great deal to tell each other and a great deal to explain.’ 
 
TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH BY SAM GARRETT 
 
 
‘A wonderfully rich journey through time and space’ Independent on Sunday

Travels with John Steinbeck

In America

Following in Steinbeck's footsteps, half a century on from Travels With Charley

Where Steinbeck generally avoided the hubbub of big cities, Mak balances descriptions of the rural plains and towns that symbolize the country's early origins with fascinating sections on urban growth and decay... An ambitious and enjoyable take on America's story

Rambling, thoughtful, often funny... Wonderful

[A] smart, deep-rooted state of the nation report from Main Street, USA

The lyrical story of two journeys interwoven with a broad history and witty observations about the changes of place and people over the past 50 years

The vividness of life is also superbly drawn with exchanges between Mak, and many of the people that he meets on the journey. There are also copious notes and research used to back up many of the points that Mak makes, and how they relate to both Steinbeck’s times, and how things are now.

In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans.The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books. 
 
Half a century on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck’s home. Mile after mile, as he retraces Steinbeck’s footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest and stumbles across glistening suburbs and boarded-up stores, Mak searches for the roots of America and what remains of the world Steinbeck describes. How has America changed in the last fifty years; what remains of the American dream; and what do Europe and America now have in common?

The Biography of a Village

An Island in Time

A fascinating account of the life and charming inhabitants of a typical countryside village, and how it must adapt and change in order to survive in the modern world.

Mak is good on the pulse of the village, its ebb and flow as people come and go, but running throughout the book is a genuine anger that this is a meritorious way of life we are too eager to dismiss

A big subject, neatly summarized, in which he also studies the changes in people's values that take place when they move to big cities, and the role now played by incomers in village life

Nowhere has the silent rural revolution been described more beautifully and with mroe feeling

This book is not just about Jorwerd, it is about all the villages in the world, the oldest community known to man, where all our ancestors, our collective memories, our highest values and most beautiful stories originate

Geert Mak is a jounalist and historian, and one of Holland's bestselling writers; his prizewinning books include Amsterdam and In Europe. 
 
Translated by Ann Kelland.

In this book Geert Mak returns to the small Frisian village of his childhood, Jorwert (pop. 330 and falling). It's a typical European village where the shops are closing down, the few children left will escape to a less arduous life in the city and it's becoming increasingly isolated. Jowert has more in common with an English village than with Amsterdam, and it's moving story of neighbours and their efforts to preserve their long established way of life is relevant to the changing face of the countryside everywhere in Europe.

A Journey Between Orient and Occident

The Bridge

The Bridge is a charming, learned and unique gem of a book by the author of the international bestseller In Europe.

This gem of a history book is slim enough to squeeze into the smallest piece of carry-on luggage but contains a wealth of stories about Istanbul's famous Galata bridge...Weaving the long history of the bridge with those who populate it today, the sensitive Mak shines a light on contemporary Turkey and its changing relationship with the rest of Europe

Geert Mak introduces us to the city's denizen and history, stressing the symbolic importance of the bridge to a nation that sees itself as the meeting place between Europe and Asia

Geert Mak's thoughtful travelogue sketches out Istanbul's past, and provides a touching portrait of its present inhabitants... his thoughtful, beautifully written book is suffused with respect for the richness of the individual life

Stories from the heart of a travelogue written with sympathy and acute observation

Part history lesson, part cultural essay, The Bridge's slender size does not diminish it's riches

Geert Mak is a journalist and historian, and one of The Netherlands' bestselling writers; his books include An Island in Time, Amsterdam and In Europe, and have won many prizes.

Istanbul's Galata Bridge has spanned the Golden Horn since the sixth century AD, connecting the old city with the more Western districts to the north. But the bridge is a city in itself, peopled by merchants and petty thieves, tourists and fishermen, and at the same time a microcosmic reflection of Turkey as the link between Asia and Europe. 
 
Geert Mak introduces us to the cigarette vendors and the best pickpockets in Europe, to the pride of the cobbler and the tea-seller's homesickness, and interweaves their stories with vignettes illuminating the extraordinary history of Istanbul and Turkey. 
 
Charming and learned, The Bridge is a delightful book from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller In Europe.

Travels Through the Twentieth Century

In Europe

A spellbinding history of 20th-century Europe that has the scope, pace and same capacity to delight as that of any epic novel.

A broader travelling history of the whole of Europe's 20th century. As befits a journalist with an eye for bad news, he also has much more to say on its calamitous first half than on its more successful second half... Mr Mak tells this part of the story vividly and in great, gory detail, moving from grim fields of battle (Verdun, Stalingrad) to places of revolution (Petrograd, Berlin), and on to ghastly charnel-houses of death and destruction (Auschwitz, Dresden)

An ingenious geographical-chronological structure... It's impossible not to get drawn into this book

The pace rarely slackens and every page sparkles with insight

In Europe is not so much a work of history, nor is it strictly a travelogue of the present; it is part of a growing genre that is sometimes referred to as the 'history of the present', but might just as well be the 'presence of the past'. It is undoubtedly a spectacular and beautifully crafted piece of such writing

Moving across a vivid historical landscape, his portrait of Europe, in all her bloody barbarism and civilised glory, helps us confront exactly what we need to know....a timely book, and one we can't afford to ignore

This immense book is part masterpiece, part sheer exhaustion.  The masterpiece part lies chiefly in its breathtaking invention

Everywhere he goes, Mak is quietly ruthless in unmasking the acts of forgetting, selective amnesia, myth-making and historical obfuscation that persist...Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler of shame and self-deceptions

How eloquently Mak rails against the alliance of consumerism and bureaucracy! ... He has a great eye for telling detail... Only a powerful, humane and serious mind could give coherence to mass detail which, however arresting piece by piece, would otherwise soon become wearying... as much a journey around Geert Mak's head as it is a journey around Europe

Geert Mak is a journalist and historian, and is one of Holland's bestselling writers. His books include Amsterdam, In Europe and Jorwerd.

Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge of a new millennium. 
 
The result is mesmerising: Mak's rare double talent as a sharp-eyed journalist and a hugely imaginative historian makes In Europe a dazzling account of that journey, full of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Adriana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the gates of the camp at Birkenau. 
 
But Mak is above all an observer. He describes what he sees at places that have become Europe's well-springs of memory, where history is written into the landscape. At Ypres he hears the blast of munitions from the Great War that are still detonated twice a day. In Warsaw he finds the point where the tram rails that led to the Jewish ghetto come to a dead end in a city park. And in an abandoned crèche near Chernobyl, where tiny pairs of shoes still stand in neat rows, he is transported back to the moment time stood still in the dying days of the Soviet Union. 
 
Mak combines the larger story of twentieth-century Europe with details that suddenly give it a face, a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an eyewitness to his own half-forgotten past, full of unknown peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. In Europe is a masterpiece; it reads like the epic novel of the continent's most extraordinary century.

A brief life of the city

Amsterdam

A delightful journey through time and through the streets of one of the greatest cultural capitals in Europe.

Lovers of Amsterdam will revel in the exhaustive reconstruction of everyday life in the medieval city

A strong sense of irony and a lively prose style make Geert Mak's Amsterdam one of the most unusual and engaging 'city books' I have read this year

Mak's brief is... to bring Amsterdam into the modern age. This he does with wit and style. But his real achievement... is to make accessible unfussily - and unsentimentally - one of Europe's most astonishing urban success stories

This excellent book is more than essential

Geert Mak is a jounalist and historian, and one of Holland's bestselling writers; he is author of the prize-winning In Europe and An Island in Time. 
 
Philip Blom was born in Hamburg in 1970 and now works in London as a journalist, novelist and translator.

A magnet for trade and travellers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank. 
 
In this fascinating examination of the city's soul, part history, part travel guide, Geert Mak imaginatively recreates the lives of the early Amsterdammers, and traces Amsterdam's progress from waterlogged settlement to a major financial centre and thriving modern metropolis

Geert Mak

Liz Waters

Travels in a Troubled Continent

'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial Times 
 
From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium. 
 
How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? 
 
In this illuminating book, Geert Mak - one of Europe's best-loved commentators - charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. He moves through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, and on to the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit. 
 
Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks: what role does Europe now play, and how might we face our fresh challenges together? 
 
'A powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian 
 
'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler' Independent

Geert Mak

The Dream of Europe

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