New Books in Eastern European Studies
Episodes
Marc Roscoe Loustau, "Hungarian Catholic Intellectuals in Contemporary Romania: Reforming Apostles" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Set against the backdrop of the rise of right-wing Christian nationalism in Eastern Europe, this book declares that Catholic theologians ought to be u...
On Sholem Aleichem’s "The Tevye Stories"
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The original production of Fiddler on the Roof won nine Tony awards, held the record for the longest-running Broadway musical, and was adapted into a ...
Helen Pfeifer, "Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands" (Princeton UP, 2022)
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the sixteenth century, and the Ottoman Empire has just defeated the Mamluk Sultanate, conquering Damascus and Cairo, important centers of Arab ...
Jeff Hayton, "Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany" (Oxford UP, 2022)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff Hayton's book Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany (Oxford UP, 2022) is a cultural history of punk in Germany. The manusc...
Anthony Pagden, "The Pursuit of Europe: A History" (Oxford UP, 2022)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The European Union, we are told, is facing extinction. Most of those who believe that, however, have no understanding of how, and why, it become possi...
Olena Palko and Constantin Ardeleanu, "Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine have brought scholarly and public attention to Ukraine's borders....
Kathryn E. Stoner, "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2020)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Too often, we are told that Russia plays a weak hand well. But, perhaps the nation's cards are better than we know. Russia ranks significantly behind ...
Dennis Deletant, "In Search of Romania" (Hurst, 2022)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The imposition of Communist ideology was a misfortune for millions in Eastern Europe, but never for Dennis Deletant. Instead, it drew him to Romania. ...
Francine Friedman, "Like Salt for Bread: The Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina" (Brill, 2021)
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Francine Friedman's Like Salt for Bread: The Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Brill, 2021) is the only comprehensive treatment in any language of a r...
Sergei Zhuk, "KGB Operations Against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine 1953-1991" (Routledge, 2022)
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Oriented for a general reading audience, Sergei Zhuk's book KGB Operations Against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine 1953-1991 (Routledge, 2022)...
Yehudah Mirsky, "Towards the Mystical Experience of Modernity: The Making of Rav Kook, 1865-1904" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935) stands as a colossal figure of modern Jewish history and thought. Jurist, mystic, poet, theologian, communal...
Finnish Maritime Interaction with China in the 18th Century
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As COVID-19 disrupted maritime trade with China, the world was again reminded of the importance of shipping in global commerce. The roots of Nordic ma...
The Future of Erdogan: A Discussion with Dimitar Bechev
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Reccep Tayyib Erdogan is towering politician. He has dominated Turkey for 20 years and is now being compared to Ataturk as a man who has changed the d...
Jasmina Tumbas, "I Am Jugoslovenka!: Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism" (Manchester UP, 2022)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With I Am Jugoslovenka!: Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism (Manchester UP, 2022), Jasmina Tumbas examines forms of f...
War and Peace: America's Humane War and the Crisis in Ukraine
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast is a recorded panel discussion on “War and Peace: America's Humane War and the Crisis in Ukraine.” The panel was part of the Annual C...
Hikmet Karčić, "Torture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Half a century after the Holocaust, on European soil, Bosnian Serbs orchestrated a system of concentration camps where they subjected their Bosniak Mu...
Lauren K. Stokes, "Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany" (Oxford UP, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in 1955, West Germany recruited millions of people as guest workers from Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and especially Turkey. ...
Joshua D. Zimmerman, "Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland" (Harvard UP, 2022)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1920s, Józef Piłsudski was a household name not just in Poland, but across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean as well. Yet this complex and...
Ukrainian Nationalism in Historical Context
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of the ongoing war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, it is vital that the lay-educated public understand the historical origins...
Andrew Monaghan, "Russian Grand Strategy in the Era of Global Power Competition" (Manchester UP, 2022)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The status of Russia as a world power has been fiercely debated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although often ignored, Russia came back into ...
Andrew Monaghan, "Russian Grand Strategy in the Era of Global Power Competition" (Manchester UP, 2022)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The status of Russia as a world power has been fiercely debated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although often ignored, Russia came back into ...
Menachem Kaiser, "Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure" (Mariner Books, 2021)
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Menachem Kaiser's book Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (Mariner Books, 2021) is set in motion when the author takes up his H...
Paul Lerner et al., "Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) investigates the place and meaning ...
David de Jong, "Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties" (Mariner Books, 2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nazi Billionnaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties (HarperCollins, 2022), journalist David de Jong presents a groundbreaking ...
Denisa Nesťáková and Katja Grosse-Sommer, "If This Is a Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Denisa Nesťáková and Katja Grosse-Sommer edited volumne If This Is a Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust (Academic Studies Press,...
Philippe Henri Blasen, "La 'primaute' de la nation roumaine" et les 'etrangers': Les minorites et leur liberte du travail sous le cabinet Goga et la dictature royale" (2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After decades of rule by the National Liberal Party or one of its centre-right, mainstream rivals – usually either the Conservative Party or the Nat...
Ralph Hope, "The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present" (Oneworld, 2021)
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. For forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in m...
Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of Germany" (Robinson, 2022)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This succinct history of Germany will take you on an incredible journey through time spanning from the 1500s to the present. Focusing on Germany in de...
Zarina Burkadze, "Great Power Competition and the Path to Democracy: The Case of Georgia, 1991-2020" (U Rochester Press, 2022)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In her book Great Power Competition and the Path to Democracy: The Case of Georgia, 1991-2020 (University of Rochester Press, 2022), Zarina Burkadze...
Ioana Florea et al., "Contemporary Housing Struggles: A Structural Field of Contention Approach" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary Housing Struggles: A Structural Field of Contention Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) provides a comparative study of housing contenti...
Olga Bertelsen, "In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine's Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1970s" (Lexington Books, 2022)
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Olga Bertelsen's In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine's Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1970s (Lexington Books, 2022) focuses on the generation of the s...
Tomek Jankowski, "Eastern Europe!: Everything You Need to Know about the History (and More) of a Region That Shaped Our World and Still Does" (New Europe, 2021)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau once gave a press conference while visiting Washington, during which he famously said: "Living next to [the United...
Stefan Auer, "European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency" (Oxford UP, 2022)
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"With the eurozone crisis going back to 2010, the refugee crisis that culminated in 2015, the crisis of the EU-Russia relationship going back to the U...
Yechiel Weizman, "Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces After the Holocaust" (Cornell UP, 2022)
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces After the Holocaust (Cornell UP, 2022), Yechiel Weizman explores what happene...
K. Friedla and M. Nesselrodt, "Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1959): History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The majority of Poland’s prewar Jewish population who fled to the interior of the Soviet Union managed to survive World War II and the Holocaust. P...
Putin's War on Ukraine in Historical Perpective
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, it was thought a worthwhile idea to have an informed discussion with four expert hi...
Olga Bertelsen, "In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine's Intelligentsia in the 1960s–1970s" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Olga Bertelsen’s timely book, In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine’s Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1970s (Lexington Books, 2022), focuses on the g...
Charters Wynn, "The Moderate Bolshevik: Mikhail Tomsky from the Factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936" (Brill, 2022)
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Charters Wynn's book The Moderate Bolshevik: Mikhail Tomsky from the Factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936 (Brill, 2022)is English-language biography o...
Ferenc Hörcher, "The Political Philosophy of the European City: From Polis, Through City-State, to Megalopolis?" (Lexington Book, 2021)
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To many the city might seem simply a large urban area to live within, but it actually forms an important political concept and community that has been...
Victoria A. Malko, "The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide: The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s" (Lexington Books, 2021)
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Victoria A. Malko's book The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide: The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (Lexingto...
Katharine Hodgson and Alexandra Smith, "Canonicity, Twentieth-Century Poetry and Russian National Identity After 1991" (Peter Lang, 2020)
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The collapse of the Soviet Union forced Russia to engage in a process of nation building. This involved a reassessment of the past, both historical an...
Bruce Clark, "Athens: City of Wisdom" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 510 BC, an obscure Greek city located literally on a backwater revolted against its tyrant. This was not extraordinary; such things happened regula...
Piotr H. Kosicki, "Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and 'Revolution,' 1891-1956" (Yale UP, 2018)
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Poland in the 1940s and '50s, a new kind of Catholic intended to remake European social and political life--not with guns, but French philosophy. P...
Jaclyn Granick, "International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jaclyn Granick about her book International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War (Cambridge UP, 2021). In 1914, ...
Lea Ypi, "Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History" (Norton, 2021)
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Sta...
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, "Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time" (Princeton UP, 2022)
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Theresa (1717–1780) was once the most powerful woman in Europe. At the age of twenty-three, she ascended to the throne of the Habsburg Empire,...
Stanley Bill, "Czesław Miłosz's Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity" (Oxford UP, 2021)
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021), Cambridge professor Stanley Bill offer...
Charles J. Halperin, "Ivan the Terrible in Russian Historical Memory Since 1991" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
29 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Charles Halperin's latest work on Ivan the Terrible analyzes Ivan's image in post-Soviet Russian memory. Halperin addresses a wide variety of sour...
Hélène Bienvenu, et al., "La Hongrie sous Orban" (Plein Jour, 2022)
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Who knows the name of the Czech prime minister, the name of the head of the Romanian or even the Polish executive branches? Yet, today everyone knows...
Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, "Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our un...
Susanne A. Wengle, "Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food" (U Wisconsin Press, 2022)
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), Dr. Susanne A. Wengle ...
Vicki Squire, "Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rejecting claims that migration is a crisis for Europe, Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity (Cambridge University Press, 2020...
Jochen Lingelbach, "On the Edges of Whiteness: Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the horrors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine unfold before our eyes, we have witnessed a massive wave of refugees absorbed by a range of East...
Albena Shkodrova, "Rebellious Cooks and Recipe Writing in Communist Bulgaria" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How did people exist and resist in their daily lives under Soviet control in the Cold War period? Rebellious Cooks and Recipe Writing in Communist Bu...
Piotr Puchalski, "Poland in a Colonial World Order: Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918-1939" (Routledge, 2021)
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Poland in a Colonial World-Order: Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918-1939 (Routledge, 2021) is a study of the interwar Polish state and empire buildin...
Valerie A. Kivelson and Christine D. Worobec, "Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000-1900: A Sourcebook" (Northern Illinois UP, 2020)
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This sourcebook provides the first systematic overview of witchcraft laws and trials in Russia and Ukraine from medieval times to the late nineteenth ...
Ayşe Zarakol, "Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ayse Zarakol, Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge, is the author of Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern Wor...
Lasse Skytt, "Orbanland: Why Viktor Orbán's Hungary Matters" (New Europe Books, 2022)
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Sunday April 3rd, Hungarians decide whether to elect Viktor Orbán and his special form of eurosceptical "illiberal democracy" to a fourth consecut...
Caroline Mezger, "Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944" (Oxford UP, 2020)
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 202...
Vanessa Rampton, "Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia: From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the conclusion to Vanessa Rampton's new book on Russian liberalism, the author remarks that "the prospects for liberal development in countries suc...
Lucy Ward, "The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus" (ONEWorld, 2022)
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Within living memory, smallpox was a dreaded disease. Over human history, it has killed untold millions. In the eighteenth century, as epidemics swept...
Tinatin Japaridze, "Stalin's Millennials: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Nationalism" (Lexington Books, 2022)
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Tinatin Japaridze about her book Stalin's Millennials: Nostalgia, Trauma, and Nationalism (Lexington Books, 2022). In this timely...
Ken Krimstein, "When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When I Grow Up, the latest graphic nonfiction narrative from New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein, is based on six of hundreds of newly discovered, nev...
Joanna Mishtal, "The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland" (Ohio UP, 2015)
21 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the fall of 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal decreed that the country’s near-total ban on abortion was too liberal; henceforth, pregnanci...
Carter R. Johnson, "Partition and Peace in Civil Wars: Dividing Lands and Peoples to End Ethnic Conflict" (Routledge, 2021)
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Partition and Peace in Civil Wars: Dividing Lands and Peoples to End Ethnic Conflict (Routledge, 2021), Dr. Carter Johnson examines whether parti...
Mark Edele, "Debates on Stalinism" (Manchester UP, 2020)
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Debates on Stalinism (Manchester University Press, 2020) considers some of the major debates about Stalinism during and after the Cold War. Was ‘S...
Ruta Sepetys, "I Must Betray You" (Philomel Books, 2022)
14 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ruta Sepetys is a an acclaimed “crossover” author (read by both young people and adults) of historical novels. In her latest novel I Must Betray...
David A. Harrisville, "The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944" (Cornell UP, 2021)
10 Mar 2022
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...
Vassilis Petsinis, "National Identity in Serbia: The Vojvodina and a Multi-Ethnic Community in the Balkans" (I.B. Tauris, 2019)
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, National Identity in Serbia: Vojvodina and a Multiethnic Society between the Balkans and Central Europe (I.B. Tauris, 2019), Vassilis P...
Jeremy Black, "The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Strategies for a World War" (Roman and Littlefield, 2022)
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world, with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a long period of b...
Fabio Mattioli, "Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism at the Margins of Europe" (Stanford UP, 2020)
07 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism at the Margins of Europe (Stanford University Press, 2020) offers one of the first ethnographic acco...
Hannes Grandits, "The End of Ottoman Rule in Bosnia: Conflicting Agencies and Imperial Appropriations" (Routledge, 2021)
05 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Hannes Grandits, Chair in Southeast European History at Humboldt University in Berlin, is among the very few most prominent historians of the Bal...
Jadwiga Biskupska, "Survivors: Warsaw under Nazi Occupation" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
04 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Survivors tells the harrowing story of life in Warsaw under Nazi occupation. As the epicenter of Polish resistance, Warsaw was subjected to violent pe...
Maria Bucur, "The Nation’s Gratitude: World War I and Citizenship Rights in Interwar Romania" (Routledge, 2022)
04 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A pioneering work for the history of veterans’ rights in Romania, Maria Bucur's book The Nation’s Gratitude: World War I and Citizenship Rights i...
Eva Fodor, "The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary" (Palgrave, 2022)
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary (Palgrave, 2022) explains a new type of political order that emerged in Hungary in 2010: a form of authori...
Lili Zách, "Imagining Ireland Abroad, 1904–1945: Conceiving the Nation, Identity, and Borders in Central Europe" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lili Zách is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Studies at ELTE (Eötvös Loránd University) in Budapest and has previously taught at Ma...
Mark Edele, "Stalinism at War: The Soviet Union in World War II" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stalinism at War: The Soviet Union in World War II (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) tells the epic story of the Soviet Union in World War Two. Startin...
Paul M. Dover, "The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paul Dover argues that changes in the generation, prese...
Samuel Clowes Huneke, "States of Liberation: Gay Men Between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
States of Liberation: Gay Men Between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (U Toronto Press, 2022) traces the paths of gay men in East and ...
Joanna Sliwa, "Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (Rutgers UP, 2021) is the first book to tell the history of Kraków in the second World ...
Exploring Autonomy: A History of Jewish Self-Governance in Eastern Europe
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The emergence of self-government in the Jewish community in Eastern Europe has been a slow process, often encouraged by invitations of existing regime...
Stanislav Aseyev, "In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas" (HURI, 2022)
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian journalist and writer born in Donetsk, which at present remains occupied by Russia-backed militants. Sometime after th...
Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko, "Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East-West Frontier" (Routledge, 2020)
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Challenging persistent geopolitical asymmetries in feminist knowledge production, this collection depicts collisions between concepts and lived experi...
Regina Smyth, "Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008–2020" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
18 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability. Russia 2008–2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Regina Smyth reveals how much elec...
Marc David Baer, "The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs" (Basic Books, 2021)
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Ottoman Empire has been many things throughout its long history. One of the greatest and gravest threats to Christian Europe. A source of inspirat...
Melissa Feinberg, "Communism in Eastern Europe" (Routledge, 2021)
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Communism in Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2021) is a groundbreaking new survey of the history of Eastern Europe since 1945. It examines how Communist g...
Claudine Kuradusenge-McLeod, "Narratives of Victimhood and Perpetration: The Struggle of Bosnian and Rwandan Diaspora Communities in the United States" (Peter Lang, 2021)
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The labels of victim and perpetrator in the aftermath of genocide have shaped the stories of pain and reconstructions for many of the Bosnian and Rwan...
Ola Hnatiuk, "Courage and Fear" (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2019)
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, Lviv… The city, which is located in the western part of Ukraine, evokes a highly entangled past that contains references to a ...
Zachary Austin Doleshal, "In the Kingdom of Shoes: Bata, Zlín, Globalization, 1894-1945" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
07 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the world's largest sellers of footwear, the Bata Company of Zlín, Moravia has a remarkable history that touches on crucial aspects of what ma...
David L. Hoffmann, "The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia" (Routledge, 2021)
04 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over 75 years have passed since the end of World War II, but the collective memory of the conflict remains potently present for the people of the Russ...
Paweł Markiewicz, "Unlikely Allies: Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II" (Purdue UP, 2021)
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Unlikely Allies: Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II (Purdue UP, 2021) offers the firs...
Bojana Videkanic, "Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetics in Yugoslavia, 1945-1985" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2019)
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated Fascist occupation, fended off dominating pressures fr...
Samuel J. Spinner, "Jewish Primitivism" (Stanford UP, 2021)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesme...
Nicholas Jubber, "The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales" (John Murray, 2022)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales (John Murray, 2022), Nick Jubber unearths the lives of the dreamers who made ...
Judith McCormack, "The Singing Forest" (Biblioasis, 2021)
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Two children stumble upon a mass grave in the forest outside of Minsk in Belarus where the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, buried tens of thousands of...
Katja Hoyer, "Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire" (Pegasus Books, 2021)
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-n...
Richard Bellamy et al., "Flexible Europe: Differentiated Integration, Democracy, and Domination" (Bristol UP, 2022)
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The past decade has been pivotal in the development of the European Union. The single currency has been tested to the limits by successive crises in t...
James Koranyi, "Migrating Memories: Romanian Germans in Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Romanian Germans, mainly from the Banat and Transylvania, have occupied a place at the very heart of major events in Europe in the twentieth century y...
Glenn Cronin, "Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev" (Northern Illinois UP, 2021)
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Although largely unknown in the West, the Russian novelist and political essayist Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831-1891) has left a strong legacy...
Karlo Basta, "The Symbolic State: Minority Recognition, Majority Backlash, and Secession in Multinational Countries" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2021)
17 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Symbolic State: Minority Recognition, Majority Backlash, and Secession in Multinational Countries (McGill-Queen’s University ...