Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Matthew Longo, "The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain" (Norton, 2024)
Description: The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and The Collapse of the Iron Curtain (Norton, 2024) is a truly fascinating narrative—exploring a little-known event that happened in the border area between Hungary and Austria in August of 1989, and ultimately contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. This Pan-European Picnic, attended by Hungarian pro-democracy advocates and East German vacationers on one side, and Austrians on the other, took place in the shadow of the Iron Curtain that had cut through Europe since the onset of the Cold War. This Iron Curtain between East and West was mili...