Yale University Press
Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World After 1989
This landmark global study makes us rethink what happened when the Cold War ended and our present era was born. The world changed dramatically as the Berlin Wall fell and protest turned to massacre in Tiananmen Square. With fresh documentation and deft analysis, Post Wall Post Square offers a bold new interpretation of 1989’s revolutionary upheavals and of how a new world order was forged around this duality. Enlivened by vivid human stories, Kristina Spohr offers an authoritative yet highly readable exploration of the crucial hinge years of 1989-1992 and their consequences for today’s world.
Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World After 1989
This landmark global study makes us rethink what happened when the Cold War ended and our present era was born. The world changed dramatically as the Berlin Wall fell and protest turned to massacre in Tiananmen Square. With fresh documentation and deft analysis, Post Wall Post Square offers a bold new interpretation of 1989’s revolutionary upheavals and of how a new world order was forged around this duality. Enlivened by vivid human stories, Kristina Spohr offers an authoritative yet highly readable exploration of the crucial hinge years of 1989-1992 and their consequences for today’s world.
Kristina Spohr is the Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. She is also on the permanent faculty of the International History Department of the London School of Economics. German-Finnish by birth she studied at the University of East Anglia, Sciences Po Paris and Cambridge University where she subsequently also held a Junior Research Fellowship. Prior to joining LSE, she worked at NATO HQ in the Secretary General’s Private Office. She has authored and co-edited eight books, most recently The Global Chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of the International Order (OUP, 2016) and Open Door: NATO and Euro-Atlantic Security After the Cold War (Brookings, 2019).
The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University and the National History Center) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partners (the George Washington University History Department and the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest) for their continued support.
Moderators

Christian F. Ostermann
Woodrow Wilson Center

Eric Arnesen
Professor of History, The George Washington University. Director, National History Center of the American Historical Association.
Hosted By
History and Public Policy Program
The History and Public Policy Program uses history to improve understanding of important global dynamics, trends in international relations, and American foreign policy. Read more
Global Europe Program
The Global Europe Program addresses vital issues affecting the European continent, U.S.-European relations, and Europe’s ties with the rest of the world. It does this through scholars-in-residence, seminars, policy study groups, media commentary, international conferences and publications. Activities cover a wide range of topics, from the role of NATO, the European Union and the OSCE to European energy security, trade disputes, challenges to democracy, and counter-terrorism. The program investigates European approaches to policy issues of importance to the United States, including globalization, digital transformation, climate, migration, global governance, and relations with Russia and Eurasia, China and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Read more