When the Berlin Wall was stormed and the Soviet Union fell apart, the West and above all the United
States looked like the sole victors of history. Three decades later, the spirit of triumph rings hollow.
What went wrong?
In this sequel to his award-winning history of neoliberal Europe, the renowned historian Philipp
Ther searches for an answer to this question. He argues that global capitalism created many losers,
preparing the ground for the rise of right-wing populists and nationalists and their remarkable
successes in the ‘annus horribilis’ of 2016 and its aftermath. He shows how the promise of prosperity
and freedom did not catch on sufficiently in Eastern Europe despite material progress, and how the
West lost Russia and alienated Turkey. Neoliberal capitalism also left the world poorly prepared to
cope with Covid-19, and the pandemic further weakened the Western hegemony of the post-1989
period, which is now brutally contested by Russia´s war against Ukraine. The double punch of the
pandemic and the biggest war in Europe since 1945 has brought to an end the age of transformation
that was inaugurated by the end of the Cold War.