Books

"In this volume, a rich, varied, and well-informed set of contributions make an important and profound contribution to the illumination of this problem. This book is essential for those interested in Eastern Europe, or in the general problem of the transition to liberal institutions."

- Ernest Gellner, Cambridge University

"The collection's case studies dig below the surface to analyze the informal networks whose persistence today helps explain some of the more puzzling paradoxes of Poland's first 'transition' years....Wedel's collection will thus interest both historians of communist society and contemporary students of 'transitional' politics and economics."

- Slavic Review (read review)

"Polish voices, mostly those of journalists and academics, assembled by an American anthropologist illustrate the ways Poles worked around the communist system to get what the system failed to deliver materially and spiritually and to protect themselves from its abuses and intrusions."

- Foreign Affairs

"Wedel argues forcefully that Sovietologists neglected 'the ways that linkages within and among institution-and groups as influential as institutions-connect and transform them. Different kinds of linkages, responding to powerfully different contexts, facilitate different paths of development.'"

- American Anthropologist (read reviews)

"Wedel's book ... records both the optimistic and the pessimistic expectations of people engaged in building a new Poland."

- Reason Papers (read review)

"...an important piece of historiography"

- Midsouth Political Sciences Journal (read review)