In the past 75 years, Europe has been cut in two twice—first by the Iron Curtain and then by the artificial scaffolding of the EU—and Paolo Rumiz set out to discover what that has meant for the continent's residents. Moving through vibrant cities and abandoned villages, Rumiz realizes that Mitteleuropa wasn't to be found in Viennese cafés but much farther east, beyond even Budapest and Warsaw. As he ranges from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, Rumiz gives a human face not just to what the Cold War left behind, but to the ancient ties of empire and ethnicity that are still at the root of modern politics.