Robert D. Kaplanis the bestselling author of twenty books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, includingAdriatic,The Good American,The Revenge of Geography, Asia's Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.For three decades he reported on foreign affairs forThe Atlantic. Hewas amember of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy's Executive Panel.Foreign Policymagazine twice named him one of the world's"Top 100 Global Thinkers."
“This book reveals the confident, poetical Kaplan . . . but also a
reflective, political Kaplan, seeking at times to submerge his gift
for romantic generalization in respectful attention to the ideas of
others. That tension—between an aesthetic sense of wholeness and
the intellectual acceptance of complexity—is the real subject of
the book, both as autobiography and as geopolitics.”—Timothy
Snyder, The Washington Post
“A serious yet impassioned survey of Romania . . . [Kaplan’s]
method is that of a foreign correspondent, firing off dispatches
from the South China Sea to North Yemen to the darkest corners of
Eastern Europe when it was still Iron Curtain country, and his
approach has a Thucydidean texture: a gimlet-eyed realism as
gathered by evidence, and guided by an understanding that the
knee-jerk of history is self-interest. . . . Kaplan is a regional
geographer par excellence—undeniably, whatever you think of his
conclusions—a big-picture man.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“Kaplan is one of America’s foremost writers on the region. . . .
In a series of deep dives into the region’s past—Byzantine,
Ottoman, Habsburg and Soviet—he finds parallels and echoes that
help us understand the present.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Kaplan moves seamlessly from sights, sounds, and conversations to
the resonance of history. . . . In Kaplan’s hands, Romania emerges
as no mere footnote, but as a historical and political
pivot.”—Foreign Affairs
“Kaplan’s work exemplifies rare intellectual, moral and political
engagement with the political order—and disorder—of our world. . .
. Kaplan’s writing is like the places he visits. It’s a terrain, a
concentrated expression of a particular part of the world as he
sees it. . . . In Europe’s Shadow amounts to a kind of historical
anthropology plus geopolitics, a deep study of a particular country
and people. . . . It shows how, at one and the same time, Romania
is distinctive and a key to a broader and deeper understanding of
contemporary Europe.”—The Huffington Post
“Kaplan’s is travel writing at its contemporary finest, weaving in
the sights and sounds of a faraway land alongside interviews with
its philosophers and politicians. . . . [In Europe’s Shadow]
provides an incisive, tactile introduction to the politics and
potential prospects of Central and Southeastern Europe—a region
that finds itself once again caught in the headwinds of
history.”—RealClearWorld
“A masterly work of important history, analysis, and prophecy about
the ancient and modern rise of Romania as a roundabout between
Russia and Europe . . . I learned something new on every page.
Robert D. Kaplan is a master.”—Tom Brokaw
“A favorite of mine for years, Robert D. Kaplan is a thoughtful and
insight-driven historian who writes clear and compelling prose, but
what I like most about him is his political sophistication. In
Europe’s Shadow makes you look up and think about what’s on the
page—a true pleasure for the reader.”—Alan Furst
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