New Books in Eastern European Studies
Episodes
Jacob Flaws, "Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our conversation about Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), Dr. Jacob Flaws expands the spatial real...
David A. Harrisville, "The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944" (Cornell UP, 2021)
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, its leadership made clear to the Wehrmacht that it was waging a "war of extermina...
Elissa Bemporad, "Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets" (Oxford UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The history of antisemitism in Europe stretches back as far as Ancient Rome, but persecutions of Jews became widespread during the Crusades, beginning...
Polly Zavadivker, "A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the Great War began, the Russian Empire was home to more than five million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population anywhere in the world...
Joanna Mizielińska, "Queer Kinship on the Edge?: Families of Choice in Poland" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland (Routledge, 2024) explores ways in which queer families from Central and Eastern Europe comp...
Ágnes Györke and Tamás Juhász, "Urban Culture and the Modern City: Hungarian Case Studies" (Leuven UP, 2024)
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When consulting key works on urban studies, the absence of Central and Eastern European towns is striking. Cities such as Vienna, Budapest, Prague, an...
Daniel B. Hinshaw, "Journey to Simplicity: The Life and Wisdom of Archimandrite Roman Braga" (St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2023)
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Daniel B. Hinshaw about his book Journey to Simplicity: The Life and Wisdom of Archimandrite Roman Braga (St Vladimirs Seminary P...
Diana Dumitru, "The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Based on original sources, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union (Cambridge U...
Ariel Evan Mayse, "Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2024)
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritua...
Nergis Ertürk, "Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union" (Columbia UP, 2024)
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union (Columbia UP, 2024) examines political relations and literary translati...
Alissa Klots, "Domestic Service in the Soviet Union; Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
15 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Domestic Service in the Soviet Union: Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Alissa Klots...
Mie Nakachi, "Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Mie Nakachi about Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union (Oxford UP, 2021) In 1920, the Sov...
Jacob Flaws, "Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (U Nebraska Press, 2024) utilizes testimonies, oral histories, and recollections from Jewish, German, and...
Cristina Vatulescu, "Reading the Archival Revolution: Declassified Stories and Their Challenges" (Stanford UP, 2024)
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The opening of classified documents from the Soviet era has been dubbed the "archival revolution" due to its unprecedented scale, drama, and impact. W...
Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, "The Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front, 1941–1945: War, Occupation, Memory" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1941, the Franco regime established the Spanish Division of Volunteers to take part in the Russian campaign as a unit integrated into the German We...
Krzysztof Bielawski, "The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland (Academic Studies Press, 2024) in Poland offers a comprehensive examination of the history of Jewish c...
Maria Adamopoulou, "The Greek Gastarbeiter in the Federal Republic of Germany (1960–1974)" (de Gruyter, 2024)
30 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Was migration to Germany a blessing or a curse? The main argument of this book is that the Greek state conceived labor migration as a traineeship into...
Johanna Drucker, "Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Johanna Drucker’s Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) uncovers the enigmatic life and work of Ilia Zdan...
Ken Krimstein, "Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1911 and 1912, Prague was home to Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka, two of the twentieth-century’s most influential minds. During this brief ...
S4E15 To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: A Conversation with Dr. Benjamin Nathans
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Madison’s Notes, host Laura Laurent sits down with historian Benjamin Nathans to explore his groundbreaking new book, To the Succ...
Victor P. Petrov, "Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernisation, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023) examines the history ...
J. Arch Getty and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Reflections on Stalinism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2024)
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Alisa talks with Lewis H. Siegelbaum, who, along with J. Arch Getty, edited Reflections on Stalinism (Northern Illinois University ...
Tom Theuns, "Protecting Democracy in Europe: Pluralism, Autocracy and the Future of the EU" (Hurst, 2024)
16 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The European Union has a big problem—a potentially fatal one. How should it deal with a member state or states that reject democracy and the rule of...
Hannah Pollin-Galay, "Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death...
Agustina Paglayan, "Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education" (Princeton UP, 2024)
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the expansion of primary education in the West emerged not from democratic ideals but from the state's desire to control its citizens. Nearly ever...
Cathie Carmichael, "The Habsburg Garrison Complex in Trebinje: A Lost World" (CEU Press, 2024)
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sits down with Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia) to talk about her new book with CEU Pre...
Maksim Goldenshteyn, "So They Remember: A Jewish Family’s Story of Surviving the Holocaust in Soviet Ukraine" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of Nazi camps, names such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau come instantly to mind. Yet the history of the Holocaust extends beyon...
S4E14 Our Enemies Will Vanish: A Conversation with Yaroslav Trofimov
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join us as we discuss Yaroslav Trofimov’s recent publication, Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Pen...
Anne Berg, "Empire of Rags and Bones: Waste and War in Nazi Germany" (Oxford UP, 2024)
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paper, bottles, metal scrap, kitchen garbage, rubber, hair, fat, rags, and bones--the Nazi empire demanded its population obsessively collect anything...
Yaraslau Kot, "Central and Eastern European Histories and Heritages in Video Games" (Routledge, 2024)
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on games that examine a range of national histories and heritages from across Central and Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern European Histo...
Thinking Machines: The First AI Takeover Story
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the UConn Popcast, and in the second of our series on Thinking Machines we consider Karel Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (1920)....
Larisa Jasarević, "Beekeeping in the End Times" (Indiana UP, 2024)
26 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every hundred years, as the story goes, two angels wonder out loud whether the bees are still swarming. For as long as the bees are swarming, the ange...
Peter Sarandinaki, "In Search of the Romanovs: A Family's Quest to Solve One of History's Most Brutal Crimes" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
26 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Search of the Romanovs: A Family's Quest to Solve One of History's Most Brutal Crimes (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) is a thrilling, true...
Larry E. Holmes, "Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921–1985" (Indiana UP, 2024)
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921-1985 (Indiana University Press, 2024), Larry E. Holmes shows us how Soviet football cult...
Alexis Peri, "Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence Between American and Soviet Women" (Harvard UP, 2024)
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the tense years of the early Cold War, American and Soviet women conducted a remarkable pen-pal correspondence that enabled them to see each other ...
Beatrice de Graaf, "Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After twenty-six years of unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and endless fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon's defeat i...
Susan Grant, "Soviet Nightingales: Care Under Communism" (Cornell UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Soviet Nightingales: Care under Communism (Cornell UP, 2022), Susan Grant examines the history of nursing care in the Soviet Union from its ninet...
Rachel O'Sullivan, "Nazi Germany, Annexed Poland and Colonial Rule: Resettlement, Germanization and Population Policies in Comparative Perspective" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nazi Germany, Annexed Poland and Colonial Rule: Resettlement, Germanization and Population Policies in Comparative Perspective (Bloomsbury, 2023) exa...
V. Domontovych, "On Shaky Ground" (CEU Press, 2024)
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode host, Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sits down with Oksana Rosenblum, the translator of the new addition to our CEU Press Classics series...
Norman Naimark, “Stalin’s Genocides” (Princeton UP, 2010)
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Absolutely no one doubts that Stalin murdered millions of people in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. His ruthless campaign of “dekulakization,” his pit...
Nick Lloyd, "The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918" (Norton, 2024)
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Writing in the 1920s, Winston Churchill argued that the First World War on the Eastern Front was "incomparably the greatest war in history. In its sca...
Robert Rozett, "Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on the Eastern Front During the Second World War" (Yad Vashem, 2014)
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the spring of 1942 until the summer of 1944, some 45,000 Jewish men were forced to accompany Hungarian troops to the battle zone of the Soviet Un...
Sean McMeekin, "To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism" (Basic Books, 2024)
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia ...
Samuel J. Hirst, "Against the Liberal Order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and Statist Internationalism, 1919-1939" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of the First World War the Western great powers sought to redefine international norms according to their liberal vision. They introd...
Anthony Tucker-Jones, "The Fall of Berlin: The Final Days of Hitler's Evil Regime" (Sirius, 2024)
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1945, Soviet forces descended on Berlin in the final phase of the war in Europe. The fighting was fierce as soldiers fanatically loyal to the...
David M. Driesen, "The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power" (Stanford UP, 2021)
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Rep...
Jack Palmer, "Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Palmer’s Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) invites us to reconsider a ...
Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023) compiles an array of recent scholarship that draws o...
Jack Margolin, "The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army (Reaktion, 2024) exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious and ...
Iemima Ploscariu, "Alternative Evangelicals: Challenging Nationalism in Interwar Romania's Multi-ethnic Borderlands" (Brill, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Iemima Ploscariu about Alternative Evangelicals: Challenging Nationalism in Interwar Romania's Multi-ethnic Borderlands (Brill, 2...
Azra Hromadžić, "Riverine Citizenship: A Bosnian City in Love with the River" (CEU Press, 2024)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér sat down with Azra Hromadžić (Syracuse University) to talk about her new book with CE...
Mikhail Zygar, "War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine" (Scribner, 2023)
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As soon as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, prominent independent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar circulated a Facebook petition signed first b...
Lynn M. Tesser, "Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics" (Stanford UP, 2024)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most ...
Aleksandra Djuric Milovanovic, "The Untold Journey of the Nazarene Emigration from Yugoslavia to North America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What role does religion play in migration processes? What is the reason behind migration of religious minorities? Is religious affiliation a deciding ...
Isaac Nakhimovsky, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton UP, 2024)
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Prin...
Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice p...
Yakov Feygin, "Building a Ruin: The Cold War Politics of Soviet Economic Reform" (Harvard UP, 2024)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A masterful account of the global Cold War’s decisive influence on Soviet economic reform, and the national decay that followed. What brought down t...
The Relations of Estonia and Japan from the 19th Century to early-21st Century
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is there much to say about historical ties between two countries that are 8000 kilometres apart from each other? Actually, yes. In this episode Ene Se...
Paul J. Kosmin, "Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire" (Harvard UP, 2018)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to ...
Jeremy Salamon, "Second Generation: 100 Hungarian and Jewish Classics Reimagined for the Modern Table" (Harvest Publications, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Jeremy Salamon the chef and owner of Agi’s Counter in Brooklyn comes 100 classic Hungarian and Jewish recipes reinvented for a new generation –...
Dan Stone, "Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2023)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dan Stone tells the story of the last gr...
John P. Davis, "Russia in the Time of Cholera" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of “backwardness” often plagues historical writing on Russia. In Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets (Bloom...
Daniel Laqua, "Activism Across Borders Since 1870: Causes, Campaigns and Conflicts in and Beyond Europe" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the Occupy protests to climate change school strikes and the Black Lives Matter movement, the 21st century has been rife with activism. Although ...
Cynthia A. Ruder, “Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space” (I. B. Tauris, 2018)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space (I. B. Tauris, 2018), Cynthia Ruder explores how the building of the Mosc...
Aleksander Pluskowski, "The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious Corporation" (Reaktion, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Aleksander Pluskowski of the University of Reading joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious C...
What is Going on with Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe?
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After being the posterchild of democratization, today Central and Eastern Europe is often seen as the region of democratic backsliding. In this episod...
Michelle Tusan, "The Last Treaty: Lausanne and the End of the First World War in the Middle East" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Last Treaty: Lausanne and the End of the First World War in the Middle East (Cambridge UP, 2023), Michelle Tusan profoundly reshapes the stor...
Cassio de Oliveira, "Writing Rogues: The Soviet Picaresque and Identity Formation, 1921-1938" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Plot elements such as adventure, travel to far-flung regions, the criminal underworld, and embezzlement schemes are not usually associated with Soviet...
Adam Zamoyski, "Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess" (William Collins, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Princess Izabela Czartoryska was a towering figure of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century European cultural and intellectual life. Married a...
Steven J. Zipperstein, “Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History” (Liveright/Norton, 2018)
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In what has become perhaps the most infamous example of modern anti-Jewish violence prior to the Holocaust, the Kishinev pogrom should have been a sma...
Jiří Hutečka, "Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918" (Berghahn Books, 2019)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as sold...
Victoria Smolkin, "A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism" (Princeton UP, 2018)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The specter of the “Godless” Soviet Union haunted the United States and continental Western Europe throughout the Cold War, but what did atheism m...
Maria Taroutina and Allison Leigh, "Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940" (Manchester UP, 2023)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940 (Manchester UP, 2023) features new research on Russia's ...
Barbara Emerson, "The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century" (Hurst, 2024)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Britain and Russia maintained a frosty civility for a few years after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. But, by the 1820s, their relations degenerated into c...
Andrew R. Basso, "Destroy Them Gradually: Displacement as Atrocity" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Perpetrators of mass atrocities have used displacement to transport victims to killing sites or extermination camps to transfer victims to sites of fo...
David L. Hoffmann, "The Stalinist Era" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book The Stalinist Era(Cambridge University Press, 2018), David L. Hoffmann focuses on the myriad ways in which Stalinist practices had the...
Janine P. Holc, "The Weavers of Trautenau: Jewish Female Forced Labor in the Holocaust" (Brandeis UP, 2023)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in late 1940, over three thousand Jewish girls and young women were forced from their family homes in Sosnowiec, Poland, and its surrounding...
Benjamin Nathans, "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" (Princeton UP, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR--and still provides a model of opposition in Putin's Russia. B...
Ewa K. Bacon, "Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz" (Purdue UP, 2017)
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ewa Bacon about her book Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz (Purdue UP, 2017). In a 1941 Nazi ...
Bastiaan Willems, "Violence in Defeat: The Wehrmacht on German Soil, 1944–1945" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the final year of the Second World War, as bitter defensive fighting moved to German soil, a wave of intra-ethnic violence engulfed the country. ...
Sonia-Doris Andras, "The Women of 'Little Paris': Fashion in Interwar Bucharest" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Filling a gap in Eastern European fashion studies, this book presents middle-class women consuming fashion in the symbolic 'Little Paris' of interwar ...
Jonathan Dimbleby, "Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The war on the Eastern front remains relatively less well explored as compared to the western front of World War II. Yet some of the most titanic batt...
Alexander Sasha Kondakov, "Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia" (UCL Press, 2022)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia (UCL Press, 2022) by Alexander Sasha Kondakov uncovers techniques of pow...
Anthony Kaldellis, "The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium" (Oxford UP, 2024)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated mo...
Frances Tanzer, "Vanishing Vienna: Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Vanishing Vienna: Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) historian Frances Tanzer traces the reconstru...
Sultan vs Dracula
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An interview with renowned calligrapher and author Razwan ul-Haq talking about his graphic novel Sultan vs. Dracula (al-Oblong Books, 2012). Learn m...
Kristen R. Ghodsee, "Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War" (Duke UP, 2019)
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, I had the privilege to talk with Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee about her most recent book Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and...
Maryna Shevtsova, "Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices" (Lexington Books, 2024)
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices came out with Lexington Books at the two-year’s mark of Russia’s full-scale in...
Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn, "The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are going to explore a fascinating volume of the Yiddish library, the autobiography of Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn. Set in Ukraine and Crimea, t...
Nicolas Véron, "Europe's Banking Union at Ten: Unfinished Yet Transformative" (Bruegel, 2024)
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, to stave off the collapse of their currency union, Europe’s leaders sought to end the so-called “doom loop” between the solvency of the...
Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, "The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market: Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964–1971" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market. Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964–1971 (Cambridge Universit...
William W. Hagen, "Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914-1920" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
19 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Widespread anti-Jewish pogroms accompanied the rebirth of Polish statehood out of World War I and Polish-Soviet War. In Anti-Jewish Violence in Pola...
Klas-Göran Karlsson, "Lessons of History: The Holocaust and Soviet Terror as Borderline Events" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
15 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lessons of history are often referred to in public discourse, but seldom in scholarly discussions. Klas-Göran Karlsson's book Lessons of History: Th...
Gizem Zencirci, "The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey" (Syracuse UP, 2024)
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since coming to power in 2002, Turkey’s governing party, the AKP, has made poverty relief a central part of their political program. In addition to ...
David Stahel, "Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942" (FSG, 2019)
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as the Wehrmacht's first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter...
Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish City Or Inferno of Russian Israel?: A History of the Jews in Kiev Before February 1917" (Academic Studies Press, 2017)
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Victoria Khiterer's book Jewish City Or Inferno of Russian Israel?: A History of the Jews in Kiev Before February 1917 (Academic Studies Press, 2017...
Glenn Dynner, "The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2024)
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Light of Learning: Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2024), Glenn Dynner tells the story of an unexpec...
Elena Kochetkova, "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024)
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024), Elena Kochetkova examines...
Judy Batalion, "The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos" (William Morrow, 2021)
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland--so...
Jan Grabowski, "On Duty: The Role of the Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust" (Yad Vashem, 2024)
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The Polish Police, commonly called the Blue or uniformed police in order to avoid using the term “Polish,” has played a most lamentable role in t...