I am convinced that this is among the most important topics for the human condition. The reader can see that you have taken the Czech Republic to be a kind of laboratory for democracy. This is where the interest for the general Western reader lies. The human condition is unthinkable without power. Power is the ability of human actors to move in the world, to initiate things, to block things, to keep things as they are.
Power is coextensive with the human condition.
It is true that I chose the Czechs because it seems to me Czechs have had the unlucky privilege of experiencing every major regime change in 20th-century Europe. This is the sense in which they have lived in a laboratory of power. I make the claim in this book that the concept of power is crucial for understanding his own life, his own manoeuvrings. My assessment of his overall importance is that this is a man whose life teaches us a very great deal about the subjects of the powerful and the powerless - of power grabbing and power sharing. I hope Czech readers won't feel picked-upon.