THE MAGIC LANTERN: The Revolution of ’89...

THE MAGIC LANTERN: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague by Timothy Garton Ash (Vintage: $10; 165 pp.). In his first-person account of the collapse of four Soviet bloc regimes, Ash examines the peaceful nature of the movements that toppled the intransigent dictatorships, and how the new leaders, in their efforts to establish their legitimacy, resolved “the conflict between the moral imperative of democracy and the political imperative of swift, effective action.” He draws vivid portraits of a tough, ambitious Lech Walesa posing for campaign pictures with Solidarity candidates and a reluctant Vaclav Havel quitting the cozy basement of the Magic Lantern Theatre for the presidency of Czechoslovakia. In a new afterword, the author notes that the final results of these revolutions remain uncertain, and chides the Western powers for failing to deliver the aid they promised to the fledgling democracies of Eastern Europe.