This entry in the long-running Daily Life through History series offers older students some value both as a broad picture of communism's rise and fall in Eastern Europe, and for its more narrowly focused chapters, for instance, on the building of the Berlin Wall, escape attempts, and the history of news media in Communist Europe. Aside from a few testimonials that conditions weren't all that bad considering near-universal employment, controlled prices, and free health care and education in Communist countries, there is no real sense of daily life, and the author's almost exclusive reliance (judging on the endnotes) on previously published English-language sources results in a one-sided perspective particularly in the chapter on Depictions of European Communism in Movies, which neglects mentioning Soviet cinema. The drab page format won't lure casual readers, but for curriculum support, this exploration of a central theme in twentieth-century European history will serve well.--Peters, John Copyright 2010 Booklist