The Collapse

"This is easily the best book on the fall of the Berlin Wall."

"Sarotte is a superb historian. She's ferociously intelligent, but what really separates her from her colleagues is her acute sensitivity to human drama."

"A blow-by-blow account of the birth of modern Germany on November 9th 1989, when, at an otherwise dull press conference in East Berlin, a government spokesman said that a new law permitting East Germans more freedom to travel would go into effect immediately. It changed Europe forever."

"This is history writing at its very best, full of drama and pathos, yet immaculately researched and elegantly written."

"The Collapse challenges our narrative of the Soviet Union's collapse, 25 years after the Wall's fall. Sarotte deftly balances individual human agency and contingency with larger political forces to show that the Berlin Wall coming down was neither inevitable nor the result of global power shifts alone."

"Sarotte has produced a skillful, scrupulously documented, nuanced reconstruction of how a series of mistakes by East German leaders and officials...turned what was meant to be a carefully managed process of controlled opening...into the world's most celebrated festival of popular liberation."

"A fast-paced, fascinating account of the final weeks, days and hours of the wall."

"Sarotte's lively and engaging book scrupulously details the events of November 9, 1989, when the world watched in shock as the Berlin Wall came down."

"[A]n authoritative and fast-moving account of the events that led up to the collapse of East Germany."

"Brief, intense, and gripping.... Sarotte's effort is magnificent.... This is history at its best."

"The book that will haunt Vladimir Putin as long as he's in power."

"Sarotte's wonderfully written book--backed up with reams of research and interviews--explains the factors that led to one of the most important moments in the twentieth century."

"An inspiring and often thrilling account."

"This gripping, important account of a long-misinterpreted event is one of the most surprising books about the Cold War."

"A rigorous sifting of evidence surrounding the final toppling of the sclerotic East German state. With extensive use of Stasi files, Sarotte finds that accident, rather than planning, caused the collapse of the Berlin Wall.... [T]his account amply conveys the universal amazement and excitement of the time."

"The Collapse is a riveting and important account of the political chaos in East Germany that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mary Elise Sarotte is a distinguished historian with a playwright's eye who gives us fresh insights and telling anecdotes about one of the most important nights of the late twentieth century."

"Sarotte runs a fine-tooth comb through the archives and gathers an impressive range of stories from the ordinary people at the heart of these extraordinary events. She is keen to dispel the kind of convenient 'hindsight bias' which claims that the peaceful fall of the Wall was inevitable or engineered by bigger forces than human beings who wanted a different life."

"The most definitive account to date of the events that led to the demise of the German Democratic Republic, the reunification of Germany, and the end of the Cold War."