"Balul mascat" ("The Masquerade Ball", 1996), was Vladimir Tismăneanu's first book of conversations with Mircea Mihăieș, specifically dealing with political life in Romania's post-1989 evolution and on its relation to the European Union integration process. Tudorel Urian describes the volume and its successors in the series, all of them published at the end of electoral cycles, as "a most reliable indicator of tendencies", and to the authors as "important intellectuals of our age." Urian writes: "Although, at the time when these volumes were published, not everyone was pleased by the precise X-rays to which Vladimir Tismăneanu and Mircea Mihăieş subjected politics, excessively vocal counterarguments were never produced. The distance (not just in kilometers) between Washington and Bucharest, the superior analytic accuracy, Professor Tismăneanu's international scientific prestige, the almost exclusive use of readily available sources ..., the democratic values at the core of the interpretations (ones which no honorable political actor could afford to contest publicly) have given these books a considerable dose of credibility ..."