Books, Arts & Manners: On the Edge

Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe, by Anne Applebaum (Pantheon, 314 pp., $24)

AS ANNE Applebaum writes in the introduction to this evocative and entertaining book, “Warsaw gave me a taste for instability.” It is no surprise, therefore, that 1991 saw her heading toward the disintegrating Soviet Union. Rather than visit Moscow or Leningrad, however, she chose to journey down the empire’s western frontier, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In earlier times much of this region was known to Poles as the “Kresy,” a word for “borderlands” that implies “a lack of demarcation, an endless horizon with nothing certain beyond.”

About the Author

Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

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Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe, by Anne Applebaum (Pantheon, 314 pp., $24)

AS ANNE Applebaum writes in the introduction to this evocative and entertaining book, “Warsaw gave me a taste for instability.” It is no surprise, therefore, that 1991 saw her heading toward the disintegrating Soviet Union. Rather than visit Moscow or Leningrad, however, she chose to journey down the empire’s western frontier, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In earlier times much of this region was known to Poles as the “Kresy,” a word for “borderlands” that implies “a lack of demarcation, an endless horizon with nothing certain beyond.”