Once Again for Thucydides

History is not all battles and great leaders, nor huge social forces and turbulent change. Instead, the Austrian novelist Peter Handke suggests in this set of prose-poem-like essays, it embodies small moments, tiny fragments of landscape and memory. Set mostly in post-World War II Western Europe and the Balkans, his vignettes center on history's forgotten people and places: a young girl in Yugoslavia "wearing a bright frayed bandage on her knee," an ash tree in Munich near a triumphal arch "with its peculiar inscription, 'Dedicated to victory--destroyed by war--admonishing peace.'" Perhaps the most effective essay is a small narrative of the different hats one encounters in a Balkan city: kepis, berets, helmets, ski caps, fezzes, and all the other gear that separates one tribe from another. --Gregory MacNamee