As a young journalist Robert Kaplan visited Romania in the 1970s, when it was a bleak Communist backwater. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country that is key to understanding the threat that Russia again poses to Europe. In a vivid blend of memoir, travelogue, journalism, and history some 30 years in the making, Kaplan depicts a state that has transformed itself into a Western tourist destination yet is still emerging from the long shadows of Hitler and Stalin.