In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent

How a divided Germany achieved reunification in 1990 is a story fraught with ironies and paradoxes in Ash's searching, magisterial study. West German policymakers, argues this distinguished British historian, built up a reserve of trust and good will by acceding peacefully to the ``golden handcuffs'' slapped on by the Western alliance, limiting Germany's sovereignty and curtailing its military power. Ash ( The Uses of Adversity ) investigates Bonn's precarious balancing act between NATO and the Soviet Union, as West German leaders convinced Moscow that it was the U.S.S.R's most promising economic partner. Meanwhile, suggests Ash, West Germany's failure to protest Communist East Germany's diehard policy of stabilization without reform inadvertently led East Germany to ruin. His study draws on memoirs, interviews with key players and on the declassified files of East Germany's secret police and Communist Party. Author tour. (Nov.)