Eastern Europe

The Grand Budapest Hotel takes place in the fictional European country of Zubrowka on the eve of war. Anderson shot much of the film in Germany, drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum describes the tactics the Soviets used after World War II to take over and transform much of Eastern Europe. Her book Iron Curtain was recently nominated for the National Book Award.

Roden is the winner of Italy's most prestigious food prizes and the winner of five Glenfiddich prizes. Her new book is "The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey From Samarkand to New York with More than 800 Ashkenazi and Sephardi Recipes."

British Journalist Timothy Garton Ash. George Kennan has compared Garton Ash's powers of political observation to those of de Toqueville's. ASH's beat is Eastern Europe, and he has been on hand to chronicle the popular disavowal of Communism there (Garton Ash's classic account of the Prague Uprising in 1986 is "The Magic Lantern"). His most recent book concerns the German Re-Unification, and what Germany's role will be in the new Europe: "In Europe's Name: Germany & the Divided Continent" (Random House).

Critic Maureen Corrigan says the best she can say about Barnes's "Porcupine," about deposed communist leaders on trial in Eastern Europe, is that she "didn't not like it."

Book critic John Leonard reviews, "How We Survived Communism," by Yugoslavian critic and feminist Slavenka Drakulic. (Slah-VENKA Drah-COOL-ITCH).

Commentator Leslie Savan says that American corporations have a vested interest in breaking into Soviet Bloc markets -- and they're spreading their capitalist message through TV ads.

Book critic John Leonard reviews "Magic Lantern," journalist Timothy Garton Ash's account of the democracy movement in Eastern Europe.

Writer Timothy Ryback. He's just written a book chronicling the history of rock music in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In the book, "Rock around the Bloc," RYBACK shows how rock music has been a presence there from the mid-1950's beginning with the Elvis Craze, and continuing with Beatlemania, and punk and heavy metal music. The rock movement spawned officially sanctioned bands as well as underground groups. Ryback says the recent events in Eastern Europe were foreshadowed in 1988 when government policy on rock bands were loosened there.