Perspectives on the fall of the Berlin Wall

We make fun of Nostradamus and numerologists, but give editors an anniversary and the floodgates open. We're anniversary-ologists, as USA Today might say. Unfortunately, trying to take the pulse of what happened in Eastern Europe in 1989 is more complex than counting back the years. Just as 1865 or 1945 can't be explained without 1787 or 1933, so 1989 -- the year communism either imploded or didn't, the world either changed or didn't and history either ended or kept going -- poses challenges.

By Carlin Romano

November 8, 2009