Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name »

Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of eight previous books, including The Magic Lantern, History of the Present, and The File.

Timothy Garton Ash is well known as an astute and penetrating observer of a dazzling array of subjects, not least through his many contributions to the New York Review of Books. This collection of his essays from the last decade reveals his knack for ferreting out exceptional insights into a troubled world, often on the basis of firsthand experience. Whether he is writing about how “liberalism” has become a dirty word in American political discourse, the problems of Muslim assimilation in Europe, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, Günter Grass’s membership in the Waffen-SS, or the angry youth of Iran, Garton Ash combines a gimlet eye for detail with deep knowledge of the history of his chosen subjects.

Running through this book is the author’s insistence that, whatever some postmodernists might claim, there are indeed facts—and we have both a political and a moral duty to establish them. By practicing what it preaches, Facts Are Subversive shows why Timothy Garton Ash is one of the world’s leading political writers.

The New York Times - George Packer

Facts Are Subversive covers a decade of upheaval, disaster and disillusionment, in Iraq, in Washington and elsewhere. It's remarkable how sane and wise Garton Ash remains, even in the heat of events.