New Books in Eastern European Studies

Anna Müller, "An Ordinary Life?: The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996" (Ohio UP, 2023)

30 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With An Ordinary Life? The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996 (Ohio University Press, 2023), historian Anna Müller has produced a beautifully wr...

Joscha Abels, "The Politics of the Eurogroup: Governing Crisis and Conflict in the European Union" (Routledge, 2023)

30 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Before this century's first global financial crisis struck Europe in 2007-2012, only people in the Brussels bubble had heard of the Eurogroup. By th...

Long Live the Empire! (with Amb. Archd. Eduard Habsburg)

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Eduard Habsburg is Archduke of Austria and Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. He’s also a husband, a dad, and a ...

Kaya Sahin, "Peerless Among Princes: The Life and Times of Sultan Süleyman" (Oxford UP, 2023)

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Süleyman, who ruled the Ottoman Empire between 1520 and 1566, was a globally recognized figure during his lifetime. In Peerless Among Princes: The ...

Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism" (Stanford UP, 2023)

28 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secre...

Miri Rubin, "The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2014)

27 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Middle Ages is a term coined around 1450 to describe a thousand years of European History. In The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford...

Thomas Arentzen, et al., "Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality" (Fordham UP, 2022)

24 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sex is a difficult issue for contemporary Christians, but the past decade has witnessed a newfound openness regarding the topic among Eastern Orthodox...

Anna Schur, "The Letters and the Law: Legal and Literary Culture in Late Imperial Russia" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Letters and the Law: Legal and Literary Culture in Late Imperial Russia (Northwestern UP, 2022) explores the fraught relationship between writer...

Liisa Kovala, "Surviving Stutthof: My Father's Ordeal in a Nazi Concentration Camp" (Latitude 46, 2017)

19 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As the first Russian bombs drop on Oulu, Finland in early 1940 during the Winter War, Aarne Kovala is a young boy with a great love of the sea. While ...

Simon Dreher and Wolfgang Mueller, "Foreigners in Muscovy: Western Immigrants in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Russia" (Routledge, 2023)

18 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This interview delves into a book that is indebted to the scholarly work with which New Books Network founder, Marshall Poe, began his career: ‘A P...

Pinchas Blitt, "A Promise of Sweet Tea" (Azrieli Foundation, 2021)

16 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Pinchas Blitt about his Holocaust memoir A Promise of Sweet Tea (Azrieli Foundation, 2021). In a village in prewar Eastern Europe,...

Socialist Cultures and Politics of Secularism and Atheism

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two new books on secularism and atheism in German and Soviet socialist cultures are reshaping scholarly understandings of the relationship between soc...

Robert Aldrich and Andreas Stucki, "The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

12 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Robert Aldrich and Dr. Andreas Stucki provides the ...

R. T. Howard, "Spying on the Reich: The Cold War Against Hitler" (Oxford UP, 2023)

11 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Exactly a century ago, intelligence agencies across Europe first became aware of a fanatical German nationalist whose political party was rapidly gath...

Osman Balkan, "Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On any given day, the remains of countless deceased migrants are shipped around the world to be buried in ancestral soils. Others are laid to rest in ...

New Histories of Violence in and around the Second World War

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why does state-led and intercommunal violence occur? How do past episodes of mass violence reverberate in the present? How do victims and perpetrators...

Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500" (Harvard UP, 2023)

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the...

Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomeno...

Marius Wamsiedel, "The Moral Evaluation of Emergency Department Patients: An Ethnography of Triage Work in Romania" (Lexington, 2023)

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Marius Wamsiedel's book The Moral Evaluation of Emergency Department Patients: An Ethnography of Triage Work in Romania (Lexington, 2023) is an ethn...

Randy Grigsby, "A Train to Palestine: The Tehran Children, Anders' Army and Their Escape from Stalin's Siberia, 1939-1943" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2019)

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1938, eight-year-old Josef Rosenbaum, his mother, and his younger sister set out from Germany on a cruel odyssey, fleeing into eastern Euro...

Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, "Nur Baba: A Sufi Novel of Late Ottoman Istanbul" (Routledge, 2023)

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This conversation is with Brett Wilson, who has composed the first English translation of the classic and controversial novel from late Ottoman Turkey...

Eliyana R. Adler and Katerina Capková, "Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Diaries, testimonies and memoirs of the Holocaust often include at least as much on the family as on the individual. Victims of the Nazi regime experi...

James H. Meyer, "Red Star over the Black Sea: Nazim Hikmet and His Generation" (Oxford UP, 2023)

03 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nâzım Hikmet (1902-1963) is best known as a poet and communist whose daring flight by motorboat from Turkey to the Eastern Bloc captured internation...

Béla Bodó, "The White Terror: Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919-1921" (Routledge, 2019)

30 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The White Terror was a movement of right-wing militias that for two years actively tracked down, tortured, and murdered members of the Jewish communit...

A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia

29 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and academic Anthony Gardner (NSK from Kapital to Capital, Politically Unbecoming) interviews Marko Ilić about his new book A Slow Burning F...

Halyna Kruk, "A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails" (Arrowsmith Press, 2023)

27 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"We act like children with our dead," Halyna Kruk writes as she struggles to come to terms with the horror unfolding around her: "confused, / as if no...

Naoíse Mac Sweeney, "The West: A New History of an Old Idea" (Dutton, 2023)

27 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Naoíse Mac Sweeney presents a radical new account of how the idea of the West has shaped our history, told through the stories of fourteen fascin...

Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky, "In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine" (Arrowsmith Press, 2023)

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ukraine may be the only country on earth that owes its existence, at least in part, to a poet. Ever since the appearance of Taras Shevchenko's Kobzar...

Elly Gotz, "Flights of Spirit" (Azrieli Foundation, 2018)

20 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Elly Gotz, author of the memoir Flights of Spirit (Azrieli Foundation, 2018). Sixteen-year-old Elly Gotz hides with his family in...

Empires after World War II: The Cases of the USSR and France

20 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Where lay the fissures of Soviet power in Eastern Europe during the Cold War? Why did France fail in its postwar efforts to make its African colonies ...

Simon Geissbühler, ed., "Romania and the Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath" (Ibidem Press, 2016)

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From summer 1941 onwards, Romania actively pursued at its own initiative the mass killing of Jews in the territories it controlled. 1941 saw 13,000 Je...

Serhii Plokhy, "The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History" (Norton, 2023)

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii ...

Cristina-Ioana Dragomir, "Power on the Move: Adivasi and Roma Accessing Social Justice" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout centuries of persecution and marginalization, the Roma and Adivasi have been viewed as both victims and fighters, as royals and paupers, be...

Katherine Bowers, "Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic" (U Toronto Press, 2022)

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic (U Toronto Press, 2022) argues that nineteenth-century Russian writers actively engaged with narrative ...

Benjamin Balint, "Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History" (Norton, 2023)

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The twentieth-century artist Bruno Schulz was born an Austrian, lived as a Pole, and died a Jew. First a citizen of the Habsburg monarchy, he would, w...

Mark Galeotti, "Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Galeotti's book Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2022) is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involv...

Gönül Tol, "Erdoğan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria" (Oxford UP, 2023)

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's pugnacious president, is now the country's longest-serving leader. On his way to the top, he has fought many wars. Thi...

Stéfanie von Hlatky, "Deploying Feminism: The Role of Gender in NATO Military Operations" (Oxford UP, 2022)

01 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing launched the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Successive UN Security Council resoluti...

Ostap Kin, "Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond" (HURI, 2022)

29 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 2021, the world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the massacres of Jews at Babyn Yar. The present collection brings together for the first time ...

Evert van der Zweerde, "Russian Political Philosophy: Anarchy, Authority, Autocracy" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Evert van der Zweerde in his 2022 book Russian Philosophy: Anarchy, Authority, Autocracy (Edinburgh University Press) details a through history of p...

Artan R. Hoxha, "Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania" (Central European UP, 2023)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania (Central European UP, 2023), Artan Hoxha discusses the ambitious developme...

Dejan Djokić, "A Concise History of Serbia" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dejan Djokić's book A Concise History of Serbia (Cambridge UP, 2023) covers the full span of Serbia's history – from the sixth-century Slav migra...

Volodymyr Rafeyenko, "The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad" (HURI, 2023)

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2023) is set mostly in the composite Donbas city of Z--an uncanny foretel...

Crispin Brooks and Kiril Feferman, "Beyond the Pale: The Holocaust in the North Caucasus" (U Rochester Press, 2020)

22 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Crispin Brooks and Kiril Feferman's edited volume Beyond the Pale: The Holocaust in the North Caucasus (U Rochester Press, 2020) is the first book...

Paul Hansbury, "Belarus in Crisis: From Domestic Unrest to the Russia-Ukraine War" (Hurst, 2023)

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The war in Ukraine is entering what could well be its decisive phase as Kyiv prepares a counter-offensive and Russia announces plans to deploy tactica...

Elena Pedigo Clark, "Trauma and Truth: Teaching Russian Literature on the Chechen Wars" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The collapse of the USSR was relatively bloodless. The Chechen Wars were not. A tiny nation on the edge of Russia, Chechnya brought one of the largest...

Vitalii Ogiienko, "The Holodomor and the Origins of the Soviet Man: Reading the Testimony of Anastasia Lysyvets" (Ibidem Press, 2022)

17 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Anastasia Lysyvets’s memoir Tell us about a happy life … (Skazhy pro shchaslyve zhyttia …), published in Kyiv in 2009 and now available for the...

Piotr M. A. Cywiński, "Auschwitz: A Monograph on the Human" (Muzeum Auschwitz, 2022)

16 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Auschwitz is perhaps the best-known memorial site in the world. Epicenter of the Nazi extermination campaign of Europe’s Jewish population, the Ausc...

Samuel Ramani, "Putin's War on Ukraine: Russia's Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution" (Hurst, 2023)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Even as Vladimir Putin massed close to 200,000 troops on Ukraine's border in February 2022, many experts claimed it was a bluff. At worst he would tak...

Catherine Wanner, "Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine" (Cornell UP, 2022)

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2022) reveals how and why religion has become a pivotal political force i...

Alfrid Bustanov and Vener Usmanov, "Muslim Subjectivity in Soviet Russia" (Brill, 2022)

10 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The world as seen by a Qur’an specialist in late imperial and early Soviet Russia.  Alfrid Bustanov and Vener Usmanov's book Muslim Subjectivity i...

Iain MacGregor, "The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Heart of the Greatest Battle of World War II" (Scribner, 2022)

09 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To the Soviet Union, the sacrifices that enabled the country to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II are sacrosanct. The foundation of the Soviets’ h...

Jade McGlynn, "Russia's War" (Polity, 2023)

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and nine years since its annexation of Crimea and occupation of Ukraine’s far east, why are so many Russi...

Helene J. Sinnreich, "The Atrocity of Hunger: Starvation in the Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow Ghettos during World War II" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During World War II, the Germans put the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland into ghettos which restricted their movement and, most crucially for their survi...

Marianna Kiyanovska, "The Voices of Babyn Yar" (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2022)

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to the translators of Marianna Kiyanovska's The Voices of Babyn Yar (HURI, 2022), Max Rosochinsky and Oksana Maksymchuk. With this...

Ari Joskowicz, "Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust" (Princeton UP, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Hol...

Keir Giles, "Russia's War on Everybody: And What it Means for You" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

31 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With the annexation of Crimea in 2014 as well the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia's place in the world is a matter of fierce debate among world le...

Suzanna Eibuszyc, "Memory Is Our Home: Loss and Remembering--Three Generations in Poland and Russia 1917-1960s" (Ibidem, 2022)

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A courageous young woman escaping Nazi Germany, with no choice other than to leave her family behind... Roma Talasiewicz-Eibuszyc was born in Warsaw n...

Wolfgang Marx, "I Don't Belong Anywhere: Gyorgy Ligeti At 100" (Brepols Publishers, 2022)

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Wolfgang Marx's I Don't Belong Anywhere: Gyorgy Ligeti At 100 (Brepols Publishers, 2022) commemorates the centenary of Gyorgy Ligeti's birth. The ...

War, Optimism, Humility: A Conversation with Literary Critic Mariia Shuvalova

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of How To Be Wrong is a conversation with Mariia Shuvalova, a lecturer at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Fulbright Schol...

Oleksandra Keudel, "How Patronal Networks Shape Opportunities for Local Citizen Participation in a Hybrid Regime: A Comparative Analysis of Five Cities in Ukraine" (Ibidem, 2022)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In How Patronal Networks Shape Opportunities for Local Citizen Participation in a Hybrid Regime: A Comparative Analysis of Five Cities in Ukraine (I...

Peter Heather, "Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300" (Knopf, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the fourth century AD, a new faith grew out of Palestine, overwhelming the paganism of Rome and resoundingly defeating a host of other rival belief...

Megan Swift, "Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under Lenin and Stalin" (U Toronto Press, 2020)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Based on sources from rare book libraries in Russia and around the world, Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under L...

Valeriu Gafencu, "White Lilies: Letters, Conversations, and Poems from Prison" (STM Press, 2023)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Valeriu Gafencu was born in 1921 in the Bessarabia region of Romania. In  1941, he was arrested and imprisoned, remaining so until his death in 195...

Philip W. Blood, "Birds of Prey: Hitler's Luftwaffe, Ordinary Soldiers, and the Holocaust in Poland" (Ibidem Press, 2021)

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Birds of Prey: Hitler's Luftwaffe, Ordinary Soldiers, and the Holocaust in Poland (Ibidem Press, 2021) is a microhistory of the Nazi occupation of Bi...

Iva Vukušić, "Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia" (Routledge, 2022)

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia: State Connections and Patterns of Violence (Routledge, 2022) examines the nature and function...

Megan Buskey, "Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return" (Ibidem-Verlag, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Megan Buskey about her book Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (Ibidem-Verlag, 2023). When Megan Buskey’...

Omer Bartov, "The Butterfly and the Axe" (Amsterdam Publishers, 2023)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Spring 1944. A Jewish family is murdered in a remote Ukrainian village. Who were they? Who were the killers? Three generations later, an Israeli woman...

The Sobibor and Treblinka Death Camps: A Discussion with Chris Webb

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to historian Chris Web about two books detailing the workings of the Nazi extermination camps:  Chris Webb, The Sobibor Death Camp: ...

Constantin Iordachi, "The Fascist Faith of the Legion Archangel Michael in Romania, 1927-1941" (Routledge, 2022)

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Fascist Faith of the Legion "Archangel Michael" in Romania, 1927–1941 (Routledge, 2022) engages critically with recent works on fascism, total...

Elina Gertsman and Barbara H. Rosenwein, "The Middle Ages in 50 Objects" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The extraordinary array of images included in The Middle Ages in 50 Objects (Cambridge UP, 2018) reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Age...

Martin K. Dimitrov, "Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China" (Oxford UP, 2023)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime's agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in suc...

Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

06 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic...

Greta Lynn Uehling, "Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine" (Cornell UP, 2023)

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2023) provides an accessible lens through which to understand what noncombatant civilia...

Kyrill Kunakhovich, "Communism's Public Sphere: Culture As Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2023)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Communism’s Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2022), historian Kyrill Kunakhovi...

Soviet Hippies and German “Other ‘68ers”: A Conversation about Youth Non-Conformity and Protest

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On first glance, Soviet hippies would seem to have little in common with right-wing student protestors in West Germany in 1968. Yet as Juliane Fürst ...

Alexandra Chiriac, "Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest" (de Gruyter, 2022)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alexandra Chiriac's book Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest (de Gruyter, 2022) examines the reach of modernism in design and pe...

More on Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This is a continuation of a discussion with Jack Comforty about his book (with Martha Aladjem Bloomfield) The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews...

Sarah M. Zaides, "Tevye's Ottoman Daughter: Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews at the End of Empire" (Libra Kitap, 2022)

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In existing scholarship on Jewish subjects of the Russian Empire, there were three typical fates available to Russia's Jews on the eve of the Bolshevi...

The Future of Democratic Capitalism: A Discussion with Martin Wolf

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Does China show that capitalism works better without democracy? What can be done to secure the future of open societies in which there is wealth, tole...

Peter Hayes, "Why? Explaining the Holocaust" (Norton, 2017)

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Hayes's book Why? Explaining the Holocaust (Norton, 2017) explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the ...

Tara Zahra, "Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars" (Norton, 2023)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on ...

Rethinking the End of the Russian and Habsburg Empires

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historians often think of World War I and the period surrounding it as the acme of nationalism in European politics. In two very different books, Jos...

Anna M. Grzymała-Busse, "Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State" (Princeton UP, 2023)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sacred Foundations. The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton University Press, 2023) argues that the medieval church was a ...

Sofia Gavrilova, "Russia's Regional Museums: Representing and Misrepresenting Knowledge about Nature, History and Society" (Routledge, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sofia Gavrilova's Russia's Regional Museums: Representing and Misrepresenting Knowledge about Nature, History and Society (Routledge, 2022) presents...

Sara Pugach, "African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sara Pugach's African Students in East Germany, 1949-1975 (U Michigan Press, 2022)explores the largely unexamined history of Africans who lived, stu...

Rūta Vanagaitė and Efraim Zuroff, "Our People: Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our People: Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) traces the quest for the truth about the Holocaust in Lithuania by ...

Jacky Comforty, "The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust" (Lexington Books, 2021)

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust (Lexington Books, 2021) collects narratives of Bulgarian Jews who survived the Holocaust...

Tore Jørgensen, "Stutthof Diaries Collection: For Truth & Honor" (FriesenPress, 2022)

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the early days of World War II, as Nazi Germany brutally invaded and occupied neighboring countries around Europe, hundreds of Norwegian police off...

Piro Rexhepi, "White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality Along the Balkan Route" (Duke UP, 2022)

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality Along the Balkan Route (Duke UP, 2022), Piro Rexhepi explores the overlapping postsocialist ...

Golda Akhiezer, "Historical Consciousness, Haskalah, and Nationalism Among the Karaites of Eastern Europe" (Brill, 2017)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Golda Akhiezer's Historical Consciousness, Haskalah, and Nationalism Among the Karaites of Eastern Europe (Brill, 2017; translated by David Greenber...

Natasha Lance Rogoff, "Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the early 1990s, and the USSR is no more. An intrepid young American TV producer has been given a seemingly foolhardy task: bringing the belov...

Alan Verskin, "Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah: The Sixteenth-Century Journey of David Reubeni Through Africa, the Middle East, and Europe" (Stanford UP, 2023)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1524, a man named David Reubeni appeared in Venice, claiming to be the ambassador of a powerful Jewish kingdom deep in the heart of Arabia. In this...

Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he rea...

Where is the Left? The Rise and Decline of Social Democratic Movements

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week on International Horizons, David Abraham from the University of Miami discusses the origins of social democratic parties in Europe and the p...

Tim Harte, "Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!: Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture" (U Wisconsin Press, 2020)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Tim Harte's Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!: Sports, Art, and Ideology in Late Russian and Early Soviet Culture (U Wisconsin Press, 2020) lo...

Richard Overy, "Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945" (Viking, 2022)

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 (Viking, 2022) to recast the way in which we view the Second World War a...

Anthony Tucker-Jones, "Kursk 1943: Hitler's Bitter Harvest" (History Press, 2018)

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The year 1943 was a pivotal one on the Eastern Front during World War II. The Axis had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the battle of Stalingrad earl...

Catherine Ashton, "And Then What?: Stories from Twenty-First-Century Diplomacy" (Elliott & Thompson, 2023)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When she was chosen as the EU's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) in 2009, Catherine Ashton admits she "felt n...

Geneviève Zubrzycki, "Resurrecting the Jew: Nationalism, Philosemitism, and Poland’s Jewish Revival" (Princeton UP, 2022)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival. Klezmer music, Jewish-style restaurants, kosher vodka, and festivals of Jew...