This is Europe: The Way We Live Now

Product Information

He is the author of two acclaimed books: Fragile Empire, a study of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and This is London, a book on the British capital. This Is Europe, his third book, will be released in June 2023withPicador. He was previously a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, leading research on the institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative. He was also previously a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London and the European Stability Initiative in Istanbul. I wanted to gather all these people into this book and have each of them tell us a story about what Europe is today,” says Judah, “and to have each of them answer that question of what Europe is through their own lives.” These are stories freighted with hardship, dislocation and loss, and yet the author’s capacity to listen with empathy, tact and fine-tuned attention renders them life-affirming. Ben Judah: I first decided to write my book on London when I had returned mentally and physically to the city after spending a lot of time working on Russia, and I felt that I didn’t recognize the London that I’d grown up in. The city had been so transformed by a giant influx of migration and money from the rest of the world, and I wanted to bring some of the techniques of a foreign correspondent to London, and the chief amongst them was the assumption that you don’t know what you’re facing, and that you approach things with an open mind. So my book, This Is London, it’s a journey around London with me, as a narrator… And when I wanted to write a follow-up book, I decided I wanted to write a book about Europe, and I decided that I wanted to push that technique one bit further, and that is by getting rid of the narrator. I felt that the narrator is the sort of old-fashioned European travel writer, this sort of great white male wandering around in tweed across Europe or the Middle East; it sort of got in the way of speaking and listening to the people I’ve met.

Hunting the Lynx with the Old Believers | Standpoint". Archived from the original on 9 March 2016 . Retrieved 19 February 2016. Vivid, urgent and unsettling' - Tom Holland, author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture. UkraineAlert sources analysis and commentary from a wide-array of thought-leaders, politicians, experts, and activists from Ukraine and the global community. How does Sunak’s diplomacy differ from that of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss? Have Sunak’s diplomatic successes, like the Windsor Framework, impacted his popularity at home? Is a visit to DC as important for Britain as it is for other European countries?Bernstein: Do you think, given the kind of new and very deepening ties between the United States and Ukraine, there will be, following the war, a renaissance in the Ukrainian-Jewish community because of those ties? Oliver, Tim (1 May 2016). "This Is London: Life and Death in the World City Ben Judah" (PDF). International Affairs. 92 (3): 737–738. doi: 10.1111/1468-2346.12627. Judah: It depends how the war ends. If it actually ends, there’s a chance that these communities could consolidate again…and that’s why the war ending well for Ukraine is also a Jewish cause, because this kind of indeterminate gray zone is terrible for Ukraine, because it can’t join NATO, can’t join the EU, it can’t rebuild, and it also kind of starts to wither the Jewish community. I’m full of admiration for what Ben Judah has accomplished here. The scale, scope and ambition of the project is extraordinary. He has interviewed and profiled global figures including French President Emmanuel Macron, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, and former First Lady Melania Trump. As a journalist, he has reported on the Russo-Georgia War; unrest in Central Asia, the Arab Spring, and elections in the United Kingdom, France, and United States.

There was one final thing, which is that everybody in the book is a storyteller. They all want to tell their stories and they all think that their stories say something profound and important about Europe today. And all of the stories add up to a question. All of the great political philosophies—liberalism, socialism, conservatism—they’re all about how we should live. What is a good life? And all of the people in the book are asking themselves, and they’re also asking you, is this the way we want to live now? You spoke earlier about how those within and beyond the continent perceive Europe. How do you think This Is Europe will challenge, or enhance, those perceptions?What kind of diplomat is Rishi Sunak? Following Sunak’s first visit to DC since becoming PM, I spoke with Lucy Fisher, the Whitehall Editor of the Financial Times, on the biggest takeaways from Sunak’s first visit to DC and what it means for him domestically.

Ben Judah is director of the Transform Europe Initiative and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. His current research focus is on the European consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, transnational kleptocracy, European energy and decarbonization politics, and Britain’s attempts to reset its diplomatic posture after Brexit. In Washington, DC, he has worked closely with the offices of Democratic senators, including Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in seeking to develop a global anti-money-laundering agenda as a central plank of US foreign policy. I became a journalist because I love the experience of traveling around cities and continents and listening to people with very, very different points of view one after the other. So I wanted to write a book that had the closest possible feel to that—where you could read the book and you would meet, like me, one person after another from all over Europe telling their own stories in their own way and in their own voices. I don’t think there’s anything particularly special or interesting about the sort of “great white male wandering around” anymore. I think that’s a really outdated way of writing about things. How did you decide which people to include in the book?

Returning home, third-class, after living as a down-and out in Paris, George Orwell fell in with a couple of Romanians and found himself praising his country’s many pleasures, from mint sauce and marmalade to the scenery and architecture. The book he wrote after spending time in London doss houses tells a different story. The utopian myths soon fade if you are poor or Other. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Every person in the book is trying to tell a story about how they feel Europe is dramatically changing. Life in Europe is changing more dramatically than it is in North America. The traditional ways of life in Europe are transforming faster, Europe’s cities are transforming faster. And the collision between these very old and rooted ways of life and the internet is producing really fascinating moments of friction, beauty, joy, and fear that I think Americans should pay attention to. Do you think the subjects of your book identify as European? What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population of 750 million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey? Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries, steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines, fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety and a new start?

Makes you expand the boundaries of your sympathies and your understanding. It’s an astonishing achievement." ― Evening Standard TIME: How did the idea for This Is Europe come together? Did you envisage it as kind of a sequel to your previous book, This Is London? The Belarussian family, after being in a protest, having to flee the country, going from a normal life to a life on the run. Ben Judah, 27". Forbes. 18 January 2016. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019 . Retrieved 20 November 2020.Vivid, urgent and unsettling' - Tom Holland, author of How the Christian Revolution Remade the World He never moralises, never judges those whose stories he records — yet the book is rooted in a deep moral vision, a Judaic vision: the sanctity of individual human life. The thumbnail was modified from a picture taken by Sue Ream. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BerlinWall-BrandenburgGate.jpg