New Books in Eastern European Studies
Episodes
Adi Mahalel, "The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism" (SUNY Press, 2023)
26 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism (SUNY Press, 2023), Adi Mahalel presents Yiddish and Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz ...
Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen, "European Mennonites and the Holocaust" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
25 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the Second World War, Mennonites in the Netherlands, Germany, occupied Poland, and Ukraine lived in communities with Jews and close to various ...
Tracey German, "Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict" (Cambria Press, 2023)
25 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's actions in and around Ukraine in 2014, as well as its activities in Syria and further afield, sparked renewed debate about the character of w...
Asian Soft Power in Estonia: A Discussion with Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do Asian nations exercise soft power in the Baltics? Soft power is a political strategy to influence other international relations actors by using...
Mirjam Rajner, "Fragile Images: Jews and Art in Yugoslavia, 1918-1945" (Brill, 2019)
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Fragile Images: Jews and Art in Yugoslavia, 1918-1945 (Brill, 2019), Mirjam Rajner traces the lives and creativity of seven artists of Jewish or...
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2024)
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. ...
Constantin Ardeleanu, "Steamboat Modernity: Travel, Transport, and Social Transformation on the Lower Danube, 1830–1860" (CEU Press, 2024)
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the D...
Choi Chatterjee, "Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach (Bloomsbury, 2022) uses a comparative framework to understand Russian history in a global context. ...
Julia A. Cassiday, "Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) provides a critical and nuanced analysis of the relation...
Katya Hokanson, "A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia (U Toronto Press, 2023) explores a new dimension of Russian imperialism: women active...
Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg, "The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism" (CEU Press, 2023)
12 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg to ...
Agnieszka Pasieka and Paweł Rodak, "Rethinking Modern Polish Identities: Transnational Encounters" (U Rochester Press, 2023)
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anti-Semitic or philo-Semitic? Backward or modern? Locally rooted or diasporic? “Polishness” is too often flattened to an oversimplified list of e...
Lawrence Freedman, "Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine" (Penguin, 2023)
08 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The foremost authority on modern war in the English-speaking world examines Europe's most important conflict since World War II. More than any other m...
Sean Griffin, "The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Sean Griffin's book, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus (Cambridge UP, 2019), takes on the question of the source materials for the...
Andriy Sodomora, "The Tears and Smiles of Things: Stories, Sketches, Meditations" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by Virgil’s exquisitely ambivalent phrase “sunt lacrimae rerum” (there are tears of/for/in things), Andriy Sodomora, the Ukrainian “v...
"The US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV" (Indiana UP, 2022)
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV (Indiana UP, 2022) examines an under-researche...
Rustam Alexander, "Gay Lives and ‘Aversion Therapy’ in Brezhnev’s Russia, 1964–1982" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rustam Alexander's Gay Lives and 'Aversion Therapy' in Brezhnev's Russia, 1964-1982 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) examines the autobiographies and dia...
Prit Buttar, "Centuries Will Not Suffice: A History of the Lithuanian Holocaust" (Amberley, 2023)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Prit Buttar's book Centuries Will Not Suffice: A History of the Lithuanian Holocaust (Amberley, 2023) explores how different people responded to the...
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, "Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1935, two Soviet satirists, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, undertook a 10,000-mile American road trip from New York to Hollywood and back. They immort...
Illia Ponomarenko, "I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The spring 2022 battle for Kyiv was "one of the most tragic – and the most bizarre – events in modern history," writes Illia Ponomarenko. "Outnum...
Jen Stout, "Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia's War" (Polygon, 2024)
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a teenager in Shetland, Jen Stout fell in love with Russia and, later, Ukraine – their languages, cultures, and histories. Although life kept get...
Artem Chapeye, "The Ukraine" (Seven Stories Press, 2024)
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A stunning debut collection of fiction and creative nonfiction-- irreverent and unglorified; loving and tender; uncomfortable and inconvenient--by a U...
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, "Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State" (Stanford UP, 2024)
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million North Caucasian Muslims sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. This resettlement of Muslim refugees...
Bruce O'Neill, "Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
17 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce O'Neill's Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) gets to the bottom of the twenty-first-century city,...
Steven Ujifusa, "The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I" (HarperCollins, 2023)
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the Unite...
Jessica C. Robbins, "Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memory, Kinship, and Personhood" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How embedded are the dignity and personhood of the elderly in the collective memory of their nation? In Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memo...
Maria Snegovaya, "When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe" (Oxford UP, 2024)
13 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe (Oxford University Press,...
Traian Sandu, "Ceausescu: The Ambiguous Dictator" (Perrin, 2023)
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Traian Sandu about his book Ceausescu: Le dictateur ambigu (Perrin, 2023). Born in January 1918, Nicolae Ceauşescu began his ...
Anthony Kaldellis, "The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium" (Oxford UP, 2024)
07 Apr 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...
40 years of Croatian Studies at Macquarie University
07 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ingrid Piller speaks with Jasna Novak Milić, the director of the Croatian Studies Center at Macquarie University. The Croatian Studies Center at Ma...
Louis Howard Porter, "Reds in Blue: UNESCO, World Governance, and the Soviet Internationalist Imagination" (Oxford UP, 2023)
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Before Josef Stalin's death in 1953, the USSR had, at best, an ambivalent relationship with noncommunist international organisations. Although it had ...
Larissa Babij, "A Kind of Refugee: The Story of an American Who Refused to Leave Ukraine" (Ibidem Press, 2024)
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American-born Larissa Babij is at home in Kyiv when Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Her grandparents left Ukr...
Why Should We Preserve Memory of the Holocaust?
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wojtek Soczewica has led the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation since 2019, near the site of the killing fields. The Foundation aims at the preservation of...
Alexandrina Vanke, "The Urban Life of Workers in Post-Soviet Russia: Engaging in Everyday Struggle" (Manchester UP, 2024)
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the intense processes of deindustrialisation around the world, the working class continues to play an important role in post-industrial societ...
Alexej Lochmatow, "Public Knowledge in Cold War Poland: Scholarly Battles and the Clash of Virtues, 1945–1956" (Routledge, 2023)
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the years after World War II, Polish scholars and scientists faced a complex and deeply personal political reality, the result of a long and viole...
Aleksandar Bosković and Steven Teref, "Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism –...
David E. Sutton, "Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples" (Berghahn, 2021)
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What defines cooking as cooking, and why does cooking matter to the understanding of society, cultural change and everyday life? Bigger Fish to Fry: ...
Kevin P. Reihle, "The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service" (Georgetown UP, 2024)
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era...
Vladimir Solonari, "A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944" (Cornell UP, 2019)
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944 (Cornell UP, 2019) is an in-depth investigation of the political and social h...
Dan Stone, "The Holocaust: An Unfinished History" (Mariner Books, 2023)
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Holocaust is much-discussed, much-memorialized and much-portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked. Spanning ...
Erica L. Fraser, "Military Masculinity and Postwar Recovery in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2019)
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Catastrophic wartime casualties and postwar discomfort with the successes of women who had served in combat roles combined to shatter prewar ideals ab...
Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa, "The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust" (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
World War II and the Holocaust have been the subject of many remarkable stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Wo...
Alina Nychyk, "Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU: Misperceptions of Foreign Challenges in Times of War, 2014-2015" (Ibidem Press, 2023)
16 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU: Misperceptions of Foreign Challenges in Times of War, 2014-2015 (Ibidem Press, 2023) investigates the making of...
Emil Hilton Saggau, "Nationalisation of the Sacred: Orthodox Historiography, Memory, and Politics in Montenegro" (Peter Lang, 2023)
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Eastern Orthodox Churches in post-communist Eastern Europe are embroiled in long-running conflicts over ownership of territory, saints, sites, nat...
Sarah A. Cramsey, "Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the Ethnic Revolution in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946" (Indiana UP, 2023)
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the Ethnic Revolution in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946 (Indiana UP, 2023), Sarah Cramsey expl...
Robert C. Austin, "Royal Fraud: The Story of Albania’s First and Last King" (CEU Press, 2024)
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Robert C. Austin to talk about his new bo...
Dariusz Tołczyk, "Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes under Western Eyes" (Indiana UP, 2023)
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The most heinous Soviet crimes - the Red Terror, brutal collectivization, the Great Famine, the Gulag, Stalin's Great Terror, mass deportations, and o...
Matthew Longo, "The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain" (Norton, 2024)
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and The Collapse of the Iron Curtain (Norton, 2024) is a truly fascinating narrative—exploring a little-known event...
Leona Toker, "Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps: An Intercontexual Reading" (Indiana UP, 2019)
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Devoted to the ways in which Holocaust literature and Gulag literature provide contexts for each other, Leona Toker's Gulag Literature and the Litera...
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, "Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State" (Stanford UP, 2024)
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million North Caucasian Muslims sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. This resettlement of Muslim refugees...
Ilmari Käihkö, "'Slava Ukraini!': Strategy and the Spirit of Ukrainian Resistance 2014–2023" (Helsinki UP, 2023)
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In wake of the Maiden Revolution of 2013-14, the pro-Russian government of Ukraine under Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in place of a regime seeking...
Roman Dziarski, "How We Outwitted and Survived the Nazis: The True Story of the Holocaust Rescuers, Zofia Sterner and Her Family" (Academic Studies, 2024)
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In World War II's Poland, thirty year old Zofia Sterner and her husband Wacek refuse to be classified as Jews destined for extermination. Instead, the...
Ned Richardson-Little, "The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany (Cambridge UP, 2020), Ned Richardson-Little exposes t...
Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein, "The Holocaust in Croatia" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Holocaust in Croatia (U Pittsburgh Press, 2016) recounts the history of the Croatian Jewish community during the Second World War, with a focus ...
Bojan Aleksov, "Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945" (Brill, 2023)
24 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Balkans provided the escape route for tens of thousands of German Jews, and remained a place of refuge until the Nazis brutally shut it off with t...
Michael Kimmage, "Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability" (Oxford UP, 2024)
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses th...
Marko Attila Hoare, "Serbia: A Modern History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Serbia is a country that has inspired exceptional intellectual interest,” writes Marko Marko Attila Hoare in Serbia: A Modern History (Hurst/Ox...
Rachel Applebaum, "Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia" (Cornell UP, 2019)
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends: Soviet Po...
Anthony Kaldellis, "Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium" (Harvard UP, 2019)
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Though commonly used today to identify a polity that lasted for over a millennium, the label “Byzantine empire” is an anachronism imposed by more ...
George Eisen, "A Summer of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal for the Hungarian Holocaust" (Purdue UP, 2022)
10 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer ...
Putin's Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, some one million Russians have fled the country and gone into exile. Motivated by opposition to ...
Dallas Michelbacher, "Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940-1944" (Indiana UP, 2020)
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between Romania's entry into World War II in 1941 and the ouster of dictator Ion Antonescu three years later, over 105,000 Jews were forced to work in...
Serhiy Bilenky, "Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different polit...
Alp Yenen and Erik-Jan Zürcher, "A Hundred Years of Republican Turkey: A History in a Hundred Fragments" (Leiden UP, 2023)
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Republic of Turkey was founded a hundred years ago on 29 October 1923. Turkey holds a unique position between Europe and the Middle East. It conti...
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, "The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future Through Science" (Cornell UP, 2023)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can we predict the future? In The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future Through Science (Cornell UP, 2023), Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, an Associ...
Curtis Fox, "Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition and Conventional Military Conflict" (30 Press Publishing, 2023)
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The on-going war in Ukraine continues to highlight the distinct differences between how Russia operates large-scale military operations from the usual...
Anna Reid, "A Nasty Little War: The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution" (Basic Books, 2024)
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In A Nasty Little War: The Western Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution (Basic Books, 2024), award-winning reporter Anna Reid tells the extraordi...
Anton Weiss-Wendt, "On the Margins: Essays on the History of Jews in Estonia" (CEU Press, 2017)
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Estonia is perhaps the only country in Europe that lacks a comprehensive history of its Jewish minority. Spanning over 150 years of Estonian Jewish hi...
Calder Walton, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West" (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (Simon & Schuster, 2024) is the history of the secret war that Russia and the West have been w...
Elliot Short, "Building a Multiethnic Military in Post-Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
27 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On 1 January 2006, soldiers from across Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered to mark the official formation of a unified army; and yet, little over a decad...
Simon Shuster, "The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky" (William Morrow, 2024)
20 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since Simon Shuster's November 2023 Time cover story ("Nobody believes in our victory like I do - Nobody"), anyone with an interest in the war in Ukra...
Adriana Helbig, "ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid" (Oxford UP, 2023)
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adriana Helbig's book ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a micro ethnography of economic ne...
Matthew Romaniello, "Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia (Cambridge University Press), Matthew Romaniello examines the w...
Till Hilmar, "Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain" (Columbia UP, 2023)
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were comp...
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2023)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since February 2022, a string of books have been published about the war in Ukraine but, for the most part, these have been histories and political st...
Bryan Mark Rigg, "The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers: Rebbe Joseph Isaac Schneersohn and His Astonishing Rescue" (UP of Kansas, 2016)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Hitler invaded Warsaw in the fall of 1939, hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped in the besieged city. The Rebbe Joseph Schneersohn, th...
Kateryna Malaia, "Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture before and after 1991" (Northern Illinois UP, 2023)
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture Before and After 1991 (Northern Illinois UP, 2023) Kateryna Malaia examines th...
Klaus Buchenau, "From Grand Estates to Grand Corruption: The Battle Over the Possessions of Prince Albert of Thurn and Taxis in Interwar Yugoslavia" (Brill, 2023)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Klaus Buchenau about his new book From Grand Estates to Grand Corruption: The Battle Over the Possessions of Prince Albert of Th...
Pavel Khazanov, "The Russia that We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the tsar of Russia and established a new, communist government, one that viewed the Imperial Russia of ol...
Noel Malcolm, "Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750" (Oxford UP, 2019)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Noel Malcolm’s captivating new book, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Pre...
Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University...
Jelena Subotić, "Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism" (Cornell UP, 2019)
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memor...
Christine E. Evans, “Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television” (Yale UP, 2016)
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television i...
Ilkay Yilmaz, "Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908" (Syracuse UP, 2023)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 (Syracuse University Press, 2023), İlkay Yılmaz reconsiders the history of two ...
Brian Jeffrey Maxson, "Early Modern Europe: Facts and Fictions" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Brian Maxson about his new book Early Modern Europe: Facts and Fictions (Bloomsbury, 2023). Through the exploration of nine com...
Magda Stroińska, "My Life in Propaganda: A Memoir about Language and Totalitarian Regimes" (Durvile, 2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My Life in Propaganda: A Memoir about Language and Totalitarian Regimes (Durvile, 2023) is Magda Stroińska’s personal account of growing up with c...
Is Poland Back on Track? The Challenges for the New Government
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI's Director John Torpey interviews Grzegorz Ekiert, Chair of the Center for European Studies at Harvard...
Gary Saul Morson, "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter" (Harvard UP, 2023)
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom...
Cristina A. Pop, "The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania (Rutgers UP, 2022), Cristina Pop examines cervical cancer in...
Mario Baghos, "From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities" (Cambridge Scholars, 2021)
16 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mario Baghos's book From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities (Cambridge Scholars, 2021) combines concepts from...
Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, "Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution" (Hackett, 2023)
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"This fascinating volume is a major contribution to our understanding of the Russian Revolution, from World War I to consolidation of the Bolshevik re...
Louis-Alexandre Berg, "Governing Security After War: The Politics of Institutional Change in the Security Sector" (Oxford UP, 2022)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Security assistance has become the largest component of international peacebuilding and stabilisation efforts, and a primary tool for responding to ci...
Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski, "The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the current context, where Vladimir Putin justifies his war against Ukraine by insisting on an inevitable, unbroken teleology that binds Kyiv to Mo...
Everyday Life Behind the Berlin Wall
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews historian and journalist Katja Hoyer about her book Beyond the Wall: A...
Martin C. Dean, "Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death" (Lexington Books, 2023)
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death (Lexington Books, 2023) pieces together the story of the destruction of Kyiv's Jews using ...
Ramona Dima, "Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ramona Dima's book Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) is an in depth, extensive study of Romanian queer cultural produ...
Anna M. Grzymała-Busse, "Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State" (Princeton UP, 2023)
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton University Press, 2023), political scientist Anna Grzymała...
Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilisation
02 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The “barbarian” nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. T...
Peter Samsonov, "IS-2: Development, Design, and Production of Stalin's Warhammer" (Military History Group, 2022)
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The IS-2 is the quintessential Soviet heavy tank from World War 2. Heavily armored and boasting a fearsome 122mm gun, this tank matched the German pan...
Katerina Lagos, "The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Delving into a traditionally underexplored period, this book focuses on the treatment of Greek Jews under the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in the y...