I just finished reading (or being told, via audiobook) the Great Courses on Comparative Economies: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism. It was a great read that didn’t compare in the abstract sense; it was more like focusing on specific countries, what kind of economy they used to have, and what they have today.

It was an okay book until it got to the very end, when the author was describing how all the Communist governments fell in 1989, and that all of them were peaceful transfers except for Romania. He said that there was video of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu giving a live speech a few days before Christmas, when the crowd started to turn on him, and Ceaușescu was stunned because no one had ever done anything like this in his 30+ years of rule.

This excited me very much and piqued my attention. I’m not exactly sure why but I think it has to do with me being in high school at the time. I remember the social studies teach wheeling the TV in on a cart and letting us watch the Gulf War (the first one). A few years prior I remember the excitement of the Berlin Wall going down. I knew that this was a time of great change but somehow the Romanian revolution was only on my periphery. It was a visual symbol for me, to think of a dictator, in my time, being shown in the actual act of disbelief.

So I found the video on Youtube and it made history real for me. Mainly it made some part of Eastern European history real for me. I think I’m like most Americans in that we know a lot about Western Europe, history, culture, etc. But Eastern Europe seems dark, backwards, and unknown. So the next book I got and am listening to now is Great Courses – Eastern Europe History. I’ve never been a history buff so I’ll see how much interest I have after I finish this book, but I can foresee my family taking a long trip through Europe someday, and now I’d like to see Eastern Europe too.