When the Berlin Wall was stormed and the Soviet Union fell apart the West and above all the
United States looked like the sole victors of history. Three decades later the spirit of
triumph rings hollow. What went wrong? In this sequel to his award-winning history of
neoliberal Europe the renowned historian Philipp Ther searches for an answer to this question.
He argues that global capitalism created many losers preparing the ground for the rise of
right-wing populists and nationalists. He shows how the promise of prosperity and freedom did
not catch on sufficiently in Eastern Europe despite material progress and how the West lost
Russia and alienated Turkey. Neoliberal capitalism also left the world poorly prepared to cope
with Covid-19 and the pandemic further weakened the Western hegemony of the post-1989 period
which is now brutally contested by Russia's war against Ukraine. The double punch of the
pandemic and the biggest war in Europe since 1945 has brought to a close the age of
transformation that was inaugurated by the end of the Cold War. This penetrating analysis of
the disarray of the post-1989 world will be of great interest to anyone who wishes to
understand how we got to where we are today and the tremendous challenges we now face.
