book
The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague
Garton Ash, Timothy. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague. New York: Random House, 1990.
Why this matters here
Garton Ash’s The Magic Lantern is a witness account of 1989 across Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, including Civic Forum’s rise and Havel’s election after the Velvet Revolution. When Others Become Leaders uses that compressed arc—harassed dissident to head of state within weeks—to show how leadership can circulate when a network of prior truth-telling makes official reality no longer the only available world. Garton Ash records the events; the book asks what becomes possible when isolated acts of refusal discover they are already connected.
