Communism Unwrapped is the best in a series of recent collections that address various aspects of private life in postwar Communist Europe. Indeed, it is one of the best collections I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Each of the fifteen chapters stands by itself, but owing to the mini-introductions the co-editors have provided for the five sections, the contributions in each can be read fruitfully together. Historians of modern Europe, Eastern Europe, Communism, and gender owe editors Paulina Bren and Mary Neuberger a big round of applause for both conceptualizing the volume and for bringing together this interdisciplinary, international group of talented authors and encouraging their fascinating contributions to produce such an excellent collection.

In their useful analytical introduction, the editors distinguish between “consumerism” and “consumption.” They explain that consumption in Communist Eastern Europe did not merely imitate or react to Western patterns or consumption, but rather followed its own logic and rhythm. Rather than viewing Eastern European consumption solely from the viewpoint of long shopping lines, small apartments, bare shop shelves, and bad fashion, in evocatively titled sections (“Living Large,” “Quality Control,” “Kitchen Talk,” “To Market, to Market…” and “Constructive Criticism”), contributors offer sociocultural, historical case studies on a range of topics, including housing, food and drink (alcohol and coffee), and shopping, from a range of countries (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia).

The book's first chapter, “Tuzex and the Hustler: Living it Up in Czechoslovakia,” is a model of historical writing. In her contribution, which reads like a short story, Bren employs the 1987 film, Bony a Klid, to analyze the central role of veksláks, the male hustlers/money-changers who occupied a central role in the quotidian life of late Communist Czechoslovakia. These men—and they were primarily men—and their position both inside and outside of society were closely connected to official economic structures in the form of Czechoslovakia's ubiquitous Tuzex hard currency shops. Their behavior, socioeconomically deviant by the official standards of the day, was merely the most extreme example of practices that had become increasingly common: ordinary citizens had to participate in “extra-normal” economic activities, including stealing from the workplace and barter, merely to survive.

Rossitza Guentcheva's “Material Harmony: The Quest for Quality in Socialist Bulgaria, 1960s–1980s,” in the book's second section, brings to mind the single, divorced mother and loyal party activist, Christine, in Wolfgang Becker's 2003 film, Good Bye, Lenin!, typing a letter to East Germany's Communist authorities to complain about “the matter of garishly colored maternity wear.” Guentcheva argues that quality was a principal concern for Bulgarian Communist officials beginning in the early 1960s, when designers increasingly concentrated their efforts on creating objects of the future. Moreover, Bulgaria's Communist government had an interest in satisfying its citizens' material needs as a basis of its very legitimacy. Guentcheva's chapter complements Patrick Hyder Patterson's contribution on Eastern European department stores. In “Risky Business: What Was Really Being Sold in the Department Stores of Socialist Eastern Europe?,” Patterson analyzes the nature of the transformation initiated when officials and managers adopted institutions, methods, and techniques associated with department store business practices in the West.

The three chapters in section four demonstrate in very different ways how critical food and drink were to understanding consumption under Communism in East Germany, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They also reflect the critical role of women in consumption of these goods. In her fascinating contribution, Wendy Bracewell analyzes numerous culinary texts in Yugoslavia, which in some cases represent a little-discussed element of continuity between the pre-Communist and Communist eras, for their national and social meanings, while also showing how recipes could be objects of desire and fantasy. Katherine Pence analyzes the importance East Germans attached to coffee during the Communist era as an example of features of consumption shared with the rest of the East Bloc and uniqueness owing to competition with the German West. Moreover, both the (overwhelmingly male) coffee house and the (female) Kaffeeklatsch had long been important elements of German sociability. Although in the GDR the earlier role of the coffeehouse, like other elements of civil society and the public sphere, was limited, the Kaffeeklatsch survived, relatively unharmed. It sometimes included “real” bean coffee, the obtaining of which was a sign of individual consumer resourcefulness and of how seriously the East Germans took their coffee. Jill Massino's chapter charts variation in postwar Romanian consumer practices, especially as they affected women and mothers. The high point of consumption was the 1960s and 1970s, when there was access to the Beatles and Westerns. She concludes with the important point that for some Romanians, this standard of living, if temporary, has not been matched since 1989.

In the section on informal exchange, Narcis Tulbure's essay charts changes in Romanian alcohol consumption and production in terms of gender and reputation. It can be read fruitfully with Massino's contribution. Artisanal distilling, so popular in the contemporary United States, was a necessary aspect of Romania's rural second economy. Karl Brown's study of János S., also known as Feketevágó Úr (Mr. Pig Killer), wood thief, pig butcher, and early postwar Hungarian entrepreneur, makes fascinating reading. He escaped not owing to political concerns, but rather that the secret police would arrest and interrogate him for violating Stalinist economic policies in collectivizing, rural Hungary.

The collection's final three chapters engage with Socialist “constructive criticism” to explore lifestyle debates in post-1960s Hungary, the evolution of public opinion on Yugoslav housing policy, and appropriate Polish consumer behavior in East Germany. In her contribution, Brigitte Le Normand points out that Communist experiments with the housing market from the mid 1960s gave Yugoslavs a taste of the future, the post-Socialist, post-Yugoslav future. “Yugonostalgia,” she concludes, is rooted in large part in their appreciation for the market and for Socialism.

A number of chapters address issues of resistance, broadly defined. Bren's, Kate Brown's, and Małgorzata Mazurek's contributions come to mind here. Narcis Tulbure's Romanian peasants involved in the private production of alcohol are an example of resistance to the state monopoly over it.

The contributions are solidly based on printed primary and archival sources, as well as diaries, film, memoirs, newspapers, and interviews, and provide sources for academics who want to do research on consumption in postwar Eastern Europe. Judiciously employed illustrations enhance this volume; they range from cartoons to candid shots, including those of the Kaffeeklatch, to film stills and fashion, food and smoking advertisements.