And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend and colleague Christopher Caldwell, one of the leading journalists of his generation,

not just a journalist, a man of letters, surely, at least, a personal letters, I should say,

right?

It was written, well, been at the weekly standard for what, well, since the beginning,

for two decades, written on Europe primarily, which is what we're going to talk about today,

and the author of an excellent book on Europe, reflections on the revolution in Europe, which came

out, what, six, seven years ago,

2009.

And then, but also is written widely on so many topics, American politics, Bob Dylan,

William Butler Yates, many finance, Philip Larkin, a great favorite of both of ours.

But let's talk about Europe, so you've really focused on that, well really since for a long time, right?

I mean about 20 years or so, I think?

Yeah, I would say so.

But you made a comment to me before we got on sat down here about, for a while there you seemed

like you were writing not the same piece over and over and then things change.

So let's talk about that because I mean the trajectory for the last quarter century.

I was there in the first Bush White House, Berlin Wall Falls, Germany

unites, to people surprise, unifies under NATO. Europe, Holland Free is the vision.

Then in Clinton, well, most of it is defeated, and it looks like Europe,

Poland-free, liberal democracy, end of history kind of may not be applicable to the rest of the

world, but Europe does seem to be a place where it's happening and I guess you could

even say working.

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