I had read Shore's Caviar and Ashes for a class and hated it. This book I had gotten for free at a history conference and thought I would give it a shot. I didn't hate it but I didn't really enjoy it either. It was a book of superficial stories worked with with little from the archives. It bounced around Eastern Europe and topics like a pinball machine without much transition. At the end I felt like I hadn't learned anything other than maybe a fact or two here.