New Books in Eastern European Studies
Episodes
David Crowley and Susan Reid, “Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Block” (Northwestern UP, 2010)
11 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
We all know socialism failed in Eastern Europe and that failure reflected two great shortcomings: a lack of democracy and an economic system that cons...
Mary Neuburger, “The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Cornell UP, 2004)
23 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Eastern Europe has never had the draw for scholars or tourists of France, Italy, Germany, or Great Britain, and within eastern Europe Bulgaria has inv...
Nathaniel Wood, “Becoming Metropolitan: Urban Selfhood and the Making of Modern Cracow” (Northern Illinois UP, 2010 )
23 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When I began my graduate history, virtually all my fellow apprentice historians of eastern Europe were captivated by nationalism and focused their res...
Andrew Wilson, “Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship” (Yale UP, 2011)
02 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of weeks ago I took a bus from Warsaw and travelled east across the River Bug. The border took a long time to cross, but then this was no ord...
Gale Stokes, “The Walls Came Tumbling Down” (2nd Edition, Oxford UP, 2011)
09 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Europe may currently be in crisis and riven with divisions, but at least it’s a Europe of independent states. It was not always so. The Soviets domi...
Elizabeth Gowing, “Travels in Blood and Honey: Becoming a Beekeeper in Kosovo” (
25 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The hardest part of living in a foreign land is crossing that invisible divide between being an outsider and getting to know a country properly. An ol...
Timothy Snyder, “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” (Basic Books, 2011)
25 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Neville Chamberlain described Czechoslovakia as a far away land we know little about. He could have said it about any of the countries of east-central...
Richard C. Hall, “The Modern Balkans: A History” (Reaktion Books, 2011)
17 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Some parts of the world seem to suffer from rather too much history. The Balkans, that mountainous peninsula situated between the Black Sea and the Ad...
Matthew Kelly, “Finding Poland: From Tavistock to Hruzdowa and Back Again” (Jonathan Cape, 2010)
02 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Very little illustrates history as well as the personal story. For all of the wars, deportations and suffering of the mid Twentieth Century, it’s on...
Michael A. Reynolds, “Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918” (Cambridge UP, 2011)
22 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us live in a world of nations. If you were born and live in the Republic of X, then you probably speak X-ian, are a citizen of X, and would gl...
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew” (Yale UP, 2009)
26 Mar 2010
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve got a name for you: Robert Zimmerman (aka Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham). You’ve heard of him. He was a Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. But h...
Stephen Kotkin, “Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment” (Modern Library, 2009)
31 Dec 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Why did communism collapse so rapidly in Eastern Europe in 1989? The answer commonly given at the time was that something called “civil society,” ...
Padraic Kenney, “1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War’s End” (Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2009)
06 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
There are certain dates that every European historian knows. Among them are 1348 (The Black Death), 1517 (The Reformation), 1648 (The Peace of Westpha...
Timothy Snyder, “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke” (Basic Books, 2008)
03 Jul 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Snyder has written a great book. It’s called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (Basic, 2008). Of course it’s thoroughly ...