History of the Present, by Timothy Garton Ash (Penguin, £8.99 in UK)

Garton Ash's latest collection of reports from central and eastern Europe takes us from the German Democratic Republic's first (and last) free elections in March 1990 to the bleakness of liberated Kosovo - or Kosova as he prefers it - in December 1999, a tumultuous decade in Europe, but not, in spite of Srebrenica, to be compared with the "low, dishonest" one of the 1930s or the supremely violent one which followed that. Garton Ash visits Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and all parts of the still fragmenting Balkans and also takes time out to consider Anglo-German relations and to offer a critical - and conservative - evaluation of the aspiration towards European unity. Contemporary history, a demanding discipline which requires the combined talents of the academic and the journalist, risks falling between two stools and not entirely pleasing either chapel. However, for the intelligent lay reader - and it is at this (one hopes) not-quite-extinct beast that the present collection is aimed - Garton Ash is the business.