I'm sure that eighteen years of democracy have blown them away by now, but when I lived in Czechoslovakia the ghosts of World War Two still loitered there grimly. They whispered softly in the winds, "I'm still here ... can't you hear me?" It's hard for me to say exactly what I mean by that, or why I say that, but I'm sure any sensitive student of history who visited that country's quiet corners in 1990 heard those same sorrowful voices. They spoke of suffering and of might-have-beens not bitterly, but with a nostalgic and almost beautiful sadness. These restless spirits could be heard best in small villages and country lanes; and I heard them clearer than ever one dark December morning as I stood on a dirt road beside a hayfield in a remote corner of northwestern Moravia. The wind blew cold through the evergreens, and a thick layer of clouds from one horizon to the other diffused the mid-morning sun so well that you could forget it was up there. The darkness, the permanence, the inevitability of history hung heavy in the winter air ... Book jacket.