This book was first published in May 2010, at a time when Greece was opening the most painful chapter of its modern history. Since then, until its reissue today, the country and its citizens have experienced despair, faced insecurity, questioned and revolted, and found themselves living within new realities.

The overwhelming insecurity that manifested in people's lives, the loss of stable references, the inability to understand "what is happening to us," the suspension of the younger generations' ability to project themselves into the future, and the older generations' inability to talk about their own mistakes and responsibilities—all of these have led to a continual return to the recent past. At times nostalgically, at other times violently, the long post-dictatorship period and the democratic consensus of the last thirty years have been at the center of public discussion.

Many wonder what went wrong and "how we got here." Some dream of how we could return to the "golden ages." In any case, the 1980s have become a subject of multiple controversies during the crisis, starting from the observation that "Andreas's PASOK destroyed Greece" to the imitation of a populism that ultimately must prove itself harmless.

Amidst all this, genuine anxiety and reflection developed, new historical data emerged, and authentic cognitive curiosity for this decade was expressed. With the reissue of this work, the reader has at their disposal a comprehensive picture of a period in which, just like today, the country saw itself changing.

In some places, following the fruitless path of national exceptionalism, and in others aligning successfully with the spirit of an era. An era richer than what its critics say, more mundane than how its nostalgists see it. A decade that is studied here in its small and large aspects by 145 specialists who, with comprehensiveness, scientific validity, and voluntary work, through 264 entries and 770 documents, map the complexity of a transitional period and explore the contemporary history of democratic society beyond simplifications and selfish uses.

Vasilis Vavakos is a lecturer in the Sociology of Communication in the Department of Journalism and Mass Media at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Panagiotis Panagiotopoulos is a lecturer in sociology in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.