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So. Here's the problem. This is a very excellent book about the effects of Communism on people, even a dozen years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. It's exhaustively researched, the author's biases and personal feelings on the subjects are expressed in a way that you can fully take them into account, and the human stories that this book relates are moving and important to wrestle with in this modern time.

However, it is 400 pages of bad news. Humans are weak, bureaucracy is strong and destructive, and people turn on each other all the time. Even the processes that people put into place to heal old wounds wind up creating new ones.

On the plus side, this book is gripping, a quick and engaging read, and, oddly, entertaining. It can be very dispiriting, however. I found myself repeatedly telling people around me that I'm very happy not to live in a Communist Country, because, in all likelihood, I'd betray them. That's just what people do, after all.

Not a very inspiring message, but it's good, at times, to be reminded that people who do horrible things are often just ordinary people, nonetheless.