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A review by em_reads_books
Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny by Witold Szabłowski
4.0
Very compelling read: concise and told with a keen sense of darkly funny irony. Szabłowski most often stays out of the stories, letting his subjects' words or his observations of a scene speak for themselves. I found this extremely well done in the first section (the story of the bears) and a handful of the later ones; sometimes, though, I wanted a bit more interpretation and conclusions.
The bears chapters are truly excellent, capturing a big complex problem without many good solutions - human versus animal welfare, tradition versus assimilation, an ethnic minority bearing (no pun intended) the brunt of transition to modern European life...all told with the deepest respect for the subjects even when they're saying horrifying things. Even if the metaphorical bears in the second half don't hold much interest for you, I'd highly recommend reading the first half.
The bears chapters are truly excellent, capturing a big complex problem without many good solutions - human versus animal welfare, tradition versus assimilation, an ethnic minority bearing (no pun intended) the brunt of transition to modern European life...all told with the deepest respect for the subjects even when they're saying horrifying things. Even if the metaphorical bears in the second half don't hold much interest for you, I'd highly recommend reading the first half.