Using both regional history and pieces from his own family’s past, Jacob Mikanowski paints a detailed and wonderfully vivid picture of what Eastern Europe once was, and has become. It’s a story that reveals a region that has both spent much of its time under the thumb of various empires, but also a land of touching peripheries that was so rich in diversity that it helped give it a distinct character. It’s not quite a tale of melding and mixing - in fact, time and time again Mikanowski makes it abundantly clear that more often than not this land was a place where numerous different peoples more side-by-side than anything. Still it was a unique and fascinating heterogenous blend that, writing as an American with some roots in the region that I’ve long lost touch with, I was genuinely unaware of and absolutely loved reading about. For others with some connection to the region, or who even just has some general interest in it, then I can’t recommend “Goodbye, Eastern Europe” enough - though I’ll definitely try!