New Books in Eastern European Studies
Episodes
Ronald Beiner, "Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal democracy had triumphed...
Marc Caplan, "Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism" (Indiana UP, 2021)
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism (Indiana UP, 2021), Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European...
Anat Plocker, "The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties" (Indiana UP, 2022)
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties (Indiana University Press, 2022), Anat Plocker examines the campa...
Matthew P. Romaniello, et al., "The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé, 1600-Present" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
10 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This collection of articles, edited by Matthew Romaniello, Alison Smith, Tricia Starks, takes up the history of material culture over the past se...
Malika Maskarinec, "The Forces of Form in German Modernism" (Northwestern UP, 2018)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe were times of intense technological, social and political change and transformation, and so it’s ...
Rich Brownstein, "Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide" (McFarland, 2021)
31 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Holocaust movies have become an important segment of world cinema and the de-facto Holocaust education for many. One quarter of all American-produced ...
Putin's Attempt to Hide the Crimes of Stalinism
30 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the past 30 years, a group of Russian scholars have dedicated themselves to uncovering the crimes of Stalinism. Their organization, Memorial, has...
Tomek Jankowski, "Eastern Europe! Everything You Need to Know" (New Europe Books, 2021)
29 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the legendary Romulus killed his brother Remus and founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE, Plovdiv―today the second-largest city in Bulgaria―was...
Paul Bushkovitch, "Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia: The Transfer of Power 1450-1725" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
28 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The transfer of power is something every must state attend to (and preferably by peaceful means). Remarkably, this fundamental aspect of statecraft w...
Lucie Fremlova, "Queer Roma" (Routledge, 2021)
24 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lucie Fremlova's book Queer Roma (Routledge, 2021) offers in-depth insight into the lives of queer Roma, thus providing rich evidence of the heterog...
E. Natalie Rothman, "The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism" (Cornell UP, 2021)
24 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Dragoman Renaissance: Diplomatic Interpreters and the Routes of Orientalism (Cornell UP, 2021) is a fascinating study of a crucial early modern ...
Jeffrey Brooks, "The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks (Cambridge UP, 2019) by Jeffrey Brooks, Professor of History at Johns Hopkins Uni...
Tibor Martí and Roberto Quiros Rosado, "Eagles Looking East and West: Dynasty, Ritual and Representation in Habsburg Hungary and Spain" (Brepols, 2021)
17 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fifteen contributors to Eagles Looking East and West: Dynasty, Ritual and Representation in Habsburg Hungary and Spain (Brepols, 2021) describe ...
Bogdan Popa, "De-Centering Queer Theory: Communist Sexuality in the Flow During and After the Cold War" (Manchester UP, 2021)
17 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bogdan Popa’s De-Centering Queer Theory: Communist Sexuality in the Flow During and After the Cold War (Manchester University Press, 2021) seeks t...
Andrew Gilbert, "International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy: Encounters in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina" (Cornell UP, 2020)
17 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy (Cornell UP, 2020) Andrew C. Gilbert, who is assistant professor in anthropology at the...
Izabela Wagner, "Bauman: A Biography" (Polity, 2020)
17 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Global thinker, public intellectual, and world-famous theorist of ‘liquid modernity’, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced...
Alex Panasenko, "The Long Vacation: A Memoir" (Iris Press, 2020)
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
NB: This interview contains material about wartime experiences that may be upsetting to some listeners. When Alex Panasenko was born in 1933, his n...
Anna Machcewicz, "Civility in Uncivil Times: Kazimierz Moczarski's Quiet Battle for Truth, from the Polish Underground to Stalinist Prison" (Peter Lang, 2020)
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Civility in Uncivil Times: Kazimierz Moczarski’s Quiet Battle for Truth, from the Polish Underground to Stalinist Prison (Peter Lang, 2020), An...
Andrew Demshuk, "Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) compares how three prewar German cities shar...
David Moon et al., "Place and Nature: Essays in Russian History" (White Horse Press, 2021)
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Place and Nature: Essays in Russian History (White Horse Press, 2021) is a collection of essays on environmental history spanning primarily the 19th ...
Barbara Martin, "Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
03 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika (Bloomsbury,, 2019), Barbara Martin traces the careers of four pro...
Devin J. Vartija, "The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Enlightenment is often either praised as the wellspring of modern egalitarianism or condemned as the cradle of scientific racism. How should we ma...
James Kapaló and Kinga Povedák, "The Secret Police and the Religious Underground in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe" (Routledge, 2021)
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This new book by James Kapaló and Kinga Povedák explores the complex intersection of secret police operations and the formation of the religious und...
Katarzyna Bartoszyńska, "Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Katarzyna (Kasia) Bartoszyńska is an assistant professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Ithaca College. Her research and teaching foc...
Grant T. Harward, "Romania's Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust" (Cornell UP, 2021)
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What motivated conscripted soldiers to fight in the Romanian Army during the Second World War? Why did they obey orders, take risks, and sometimes del...
Jessie Barton-Hronešová, "The Struggle for Redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Jessie Barton Hronešová’s new book, The Struggle of Redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), she explor...
Molly Thomasy Blasing, "Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture" (Cornell UP, 2021)
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture (Cornell UP, 2021) considers how photography has shaped Russian poetry from ...
Svitlana Biedarieva, "Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art (Ibidem Press, 2021) focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithu...
Karla Huebner, "Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Karla Huebner’s Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) follows the life and career Czech artist To...
Mark Mazower, "The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe" (Penguin, 2021)
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon's defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Eu...
Katja Praznik, "Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (U Toronto Press, 2021), Katja Praznik counters the Western understanding of art ...
Yuri Kostenko, "Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament: A History" (HURI, 2020)
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Yuri Kostenko’s Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2020) is a meticulous account of how the Ukraini...
Julia E. Ault, "Saving Nature Under Socialism: Transnational Environmentalism in East Germany, 1968-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When East Germany collapsed in 1989-1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. The comm...
Andrea Gondos, "Kabbalah in Print: The Study and Popularization of Jewish Mysticism in Early Modernity" (SUNY Press, 2020)
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Kabbalah books lined multiple books shelves in bookstores, Jewish educators in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thought of copious...
Jan Rybak, "Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe: Nation-Building in War and Revolution, 1914-1920" (Oxford UP, 2021)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jan Rybak's Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe: Nation-Building in War and Revolution, 1914-1920 (Oxford UP, 2021) examines Zionist activism in...
Machteld Venken, "Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe" (Berghahn Books, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in w...
Serhii Plokhy, "The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present" (HURI, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Serhii Plokhy’s The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021) includes discussions that focus...
Meni Even-Israel, "The Steinsaltz Tanya V3: Sha'ar Hayihud Veha'emuna and Iggeret Hateshuva" (Maggid, 2021)
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Tanya, a hugely influential 18thcentury work of Hasidic philosophy and spirituality, is at the foundation of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, indee...
Emily Greble, "Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2021)
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Emily Greble, Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe (Oxford Universit...
Jay Rubenstein, “Apocalypse Then: The First Crusade” (Open Agenda, 2021)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Apocalypse Then: The First Crusade is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jay Rubenstein, Professor of History and Dir...
Leonidas Mylonakis, "Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime Marauders in the Greek and Ottoman Aegean" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Leonidas Mylonakis (PhD in History from the University of California, San Diego) is the author of Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime M...
Eunice Blavascunas, "Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe's Last Primeval Forest" (Indiana UP, 2020)
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe’s Last Primeval Forest (Indiana University Press, 2020), Eunice Blavascunas provide...
Ivor Sokolić, "International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book International Courts and Mass atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Ivor Sokolić explores t...
Eliyana R. Adler, "Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union" (Harvard UP, 2020)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1940 and 1946, thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland lived and toiled in the harsh Soviet interior. They endured hard labor, bitter cold, a...
Josiah Ober, “Democratic Lessons: What the Greeks Can Teach Us” (Open Agenda, 2021)
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Democratic Lessons: What the Greeks Can Teach Us is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Josiah Ober, Tsakopoulos-Kouna...
Gábor Ágoston, "The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe" (Princeton UP, 2021)
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The image of the Ottoman Turks and their interaction with the Christian West, has undergone many changes in the past: from William Gladstone's famous ...
Jeffrey Veidlinger, "In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil o...
John-Paul Himka, "Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA's Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One quarter of all Holocaust victims lived on the territory that now forms Ukraine, yet the Holocaust there has not received due attention. John-Paul ...
Rano Turaeva and Rustamjon Urinboyev, "Labour, Mobility and Informal Practices in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe" (Routledge, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Labour, Mobility and Informal Practices in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2021), Dr. Turaeva and Dr. Urinboyev have brought...
Olesya Khromeychuk, "A Loss: The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister" (Ibidem, 2021)
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This book is the story of one death among many in the war in eastern Ukraine. Its author is a historian of war whose brother was killed at the frontli...
Patrice M. Dabrowski, "The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine" (Northern Illinois UP, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Patrice M. Dabrowski's book The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (Northern Illinois UP, 2021) tells story of how the Ta...
Maria Mavroudi, “Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché” (Open Agenda, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Maria Mavroudi, Professor of History at UC Berkel...
Paul Betts, "Ruin and Renewal: Civilising Europe After the Second World War" (Basic Books, 2021)
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"One of the most enduring myths of history writing about Europe in the 20th century is that the century can be neatly divided into a tale of two halve...
Ivana Bajic-Hajdukovic, "Can You Run Away from Sorrow?: Mothers Left Behind in 1990s Belgrade" (Indiana UP, 2020)
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How does emigration affect those left behind? The fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s led citizens to look for a better, more stable life elsewhere. For t...
Vladislav Davidzon, "From Odessa with Love: Political and Literary Essays in Post-Soviet Ukraine" ( Academica Press, 2020)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Tashkent-born Russian-American literary critic, editor, essayist, and journalist Vladislav Davidzon has been covering post-Soviet Ukraine for the ...
Samuel Foster, "Yugoslavia in the British Imagination: Peace, War and Peasants Before Tito" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Despite Britain's entering the 20th century as the dominant world power, its public discourses were imbued with cultural pessimism and rising social a...
Mark Baker, "Time of Changes" (Albatros Books, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Baker is an American journalist and travel writer. In the 1980s, he lived in Vienna and reported on the former Eastern bloc for Business Internat...
Petr Roubal, "Spartakiads: The Politics of Physical Culture in Communist Czechoslovakia" (Karolinum Press, 2020)
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Petr Roubal, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in the Czech Academy of Sciences, and author of Sparta...
Brigitte Le Normand, "Citizens Without Borders: Yugoslavia and Its Migrant Workers in Western Europe" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Among Eastern Europe’s postwar socialist states, Yugoslavia was unique in allowing its citizens to seek work abroad in Western Europe’s liberal de...
Paul Werth, "1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2021)
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When considering pivotal years in Russian history, one naturally thinks of 1861 (the Serf Emancipation), the 1905 Revolution, or the 1917 Bolshevik Re...
Tímea Drinóczi and Agnieszka Bień-Kacała, "Illiberal Constitutionalism in Poland and Hungary" (Routledge, 2021)
03 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past decade, Poland and Hungary have become laboratories for a new kind of government: proto-authoritarian regimes that still have regular el...
Gerd Horten, "Don't Need No Thought Control: Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanw...
Nadieszda Kizenko, "Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire" (Oxford UP, 2021)
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that having their subjects go to confession could make them better citizens as well as better...
A. S. Agadjanian and S. M. Kenworthy, "Understanding World Christianity: Russia" (Fortress Press, 2021)
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Christianity is a global religion. It's a fact that is too often missed or ignored in many books and conversations. In a world where Christianity is g...
Salvatore Pappalardo, "Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe, 1870-1945" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When we think about the process of European unification, our conversations inevitably ponder questions of economic cooperation and international polit...
Zuza Zak, "Amber & Rye: A Baltic Food Journey: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania" (Allen & Unwin, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Food writer Zuza Zak’s latest book, Amber & Rye: A Baltic Food Journey: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Allen & Unwin, 2021) is a remarkable explorati...
James Mark et al., "1989: A Global History of Eastern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The collapse of the Berlin Wall has come to represent the entry of an isolated region onto the global stage. On the contrary, this study argues that c...
Margarita M. Balmaceda, "Russian Energy Chains: The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union" (Wilson Center, 2021)
13 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Margarita Balmaceda’s Russian Energy Chains: The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union (Columbia University Pre...
Volodymyr Vynnychenko, "Disharmony and Other Plays" (CIUS Press, 2020)
13 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Volodymyr Vynnychenko is one of the most ambiguous and controversial Ukrainian writers of the twentieth century. In an intricate and highly entangled ...
Eliza Ablovatski, "Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe: The Deluge of 1919" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
11 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the First World War and Russian Revolutions, Central Europeans in 1919 faced a world of possibilities, threats, and extreme contrasts. ...
Lucy Kinski, "European Representation in EU National Parliaments" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been 44 years since the Young European Federalists first coined the term “democratic deficit” – two years before the first direct electio...
Ian Ona Johnson, "Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
German Ambassador Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau believed that Germany and the Soviet Union were locked together in a Schicksalgemienshaft, or “comm...
Miljenko Jergović, "Kin" (Translated by R. S. Valentino; Archipelago Books, 2021)
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kin by Miljenko Jergović (Archipelago Books, 2021) is a family story that covers more than a century; it takes readers to various geographical place...
Richard Mills, "The Politics of Football in Yugoslavia: Sport, Nationalism and the State" (I. B. Tauris, 2018)
06 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Richard Mills, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of East Anglia, and the author of The Politics of Football in Yugo...
Chiara Bonfiglioli, "Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector" (I. B. Tauris, 2019)
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Women's emancipation through productive labour was a key tenet of socialist politics in post-World War II Yugoslavia. Mass industrialisation under Tit...
Alison K. Smith, "Cabbage and Caviar: A History of Food in Russia" (Reaktion Books, 2021)
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When people think of Russian food, they generally think either of the opulent luxury of the tsarist aristocracy or of post-Soviet elites, signified ab...
Michal Kšiňan, "Milan Rastislav Štefánik: The Slovak National Hero and Co-Founder of Czechoslovakia" (Routledge, 2021)
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michal Kšiňan’s Milan Rastislav Štefánik: The Slovak National Hero and Co-Founder of Czechoslovakia is the first scientific biography of Mil...
Eszter Varsa, "Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the 'Gypsy Question' in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956" (Central European UP, 2020)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Eszter Varsa’s new book Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the 'Gypsy Question' in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1...
Malte Dold and Tim Krieger, "Ordoliberalism and European Economic Policy: Between Realpolitik and Economic Utopia" (Taylor & Francis, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Once described as a “German oddity”†, Ordoliberalism was one of a number of new liberalisms that emerged from the political maelstrom of the int...
Andrew Jenks, "Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth" (Anthem Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Jenks' book Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (Anthem Press, 2021) explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970...
Russell E. Martin, "The Tsar's Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia's Rulers, 1495-1745" (Northern Illinois UP, 2021)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The dominant impression of Russia in the news media and politics, even today, is that it is and always has been an autocratic power controlled by a si...
Timothy Frye, "Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia" (Princeton UP, 2021)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Putin is not the unconstrained, all-powerful boogeyman he is made out to be in the popular Western media. So says Timothy Frye, Professor of Politica...
Marta Dyczok, "Ukraine Calling: A Kaleidoscope from Hromadske Radio 2016-2019" (Ibidem Press, 2021)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Marta Dyczok's book Ukraine Calling: A Kaleidoscope from Hromadske Radio 2016-2019 (Ibidem Press, 2021) is like a time capsule containing a selectio...
Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel, "Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews" (North Atlantic Books, 2021)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Until now, the herbal traditions of the Ashkenazi people have remained unexplored and shrouded in mystery. Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Her...
Kristin Poling, "Germany's Urban Frontiers: Nature and History on the Edge of the Nineteenth-Century City" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In an era of transatlantic migration, Germans were fascinated by the myth of the frontier. Yet, for many, they were most likely to encounter frontier ...
Ayse Parla, "Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey" (Stanford UP, 2019)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are more than 700,000 Bulgaristanlı migrants residing in Turkey. Immigrants from Bulgaria who are ethnically Turkish, they assume certain privi...
Rossen Djagalov, "From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema Between the Second and the Third Worlds" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Would there have been a Third World without the Second? Perhaps, but it would have looked very different. Although most histories of these geopolitica...
Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, "Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe: Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe" (Routledge, 2021)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe: Sarmatia Europea to Post-Communist Bloc (Routledge, 2021) puts images centre stage and argues for the agency of t...
Stephen V. Bittner, "Whites and Reds: A History of Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar" (Oxford UP, 2021)
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whites and Reds: A History of Wine in the Lands of Tsar and Commissar (Oxford UP, 2021) tells the story of Russia's encounter with viniculture and w...
Alessandro Testa, "Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe" (Routledge, 2020)
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (Routledge, 2020) is the first comparative historical an...
Mariusz Kalczewiak, "Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture" (U Alabama Press, 2019)
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture (University of Alabama Press, 2020), Dr...
Juliane Fürst, "Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland" (Oxford UP, 2021)
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland (Oxford University Press, 2021) is the first chronological history of Soviet hippies, ...
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was ...
Chad Bryant, "Prague: Belonging in the Modern City" (Harvard UP, 2021)
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to belong somewhere? For many of Prague's inhabitants, belonging has been linked to the nation, embodied in the capital city. Grandi...
Veronika Pehe, "Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience...
Theodora K. Dragostinova, "The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene" (Cornell UP, 2021)
18 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During this anxious decade, Bulgaria's communist leadership invested heavily in cultural diplomacy to bolster its legitimacy at home and promote its a...
Stephen M. Norris, "Museums of Communism: New Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe" (Indiana UP, 2020)
18 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed m...
Talking Ethnographic Fiction with Alexandros Plasatis
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does ethnography look like when presented as fiction? In this episode, we talk with Alexandros Plasatis, author of the new book Made by Sea and ...
Edward B. Westermann, "Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany" (Cornell UP, 2021)
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Edward Westermann's new book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany (Cornell University Press, published in associ...
Jelena Đureinović, "The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia" (Routledge, 2020)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, Jelena Đureinović's book The Pol...