Ghosts of East Berlin

With the War in the Ukraine rekindling Soviet era ambitions and the current political polarization in the United States expanding, it is time to revisit the independent memoir "Ghosts of East Berlin". "Ghosts of East Berlin", is a heart-felt authentic memoir written by Celeste McConnell Barber and her son, Eric Friedman, recollecting their experience as some of the only Americans to live behind the infamous Berlin Wall. It was January, 1988 when their family departed to live in East Berlin, the city at the center of Cold War politics - among the first Americans to be invited to the Eastern Bloc under Gorbachev's glasnost (openness) policy. The late Frank McConnell, Professor of English at U.C. Santa Barbara, had been awarded a Fulbright grant by the International Exchange of Scholars to teach at Humboldt University as part of a global effort to enhance cultural exchange and communications between the West and Eastern Bloc nations. "Ghosts of East Berlin" is their story of how an ordinary American Family did their small part to take down the Berlin Wall and in the process have it change them forever.