History / Europe / Eastern

The First Comprehensive Biography of Julia Warhola

A Comprehensive History of Slovak National Identity Formation from World War I through the End of World War II

The First Environmental History of Krakow, Covering More than a Thousand Years of History

Exciting New Research on German-Balkan Relations that Paves the Way to Integrate Southeast Europe into Histories of Germany and the East

A Nuanced Account of Pope John Paul II’s Historical Visits to Poland in the Late Communist Era

Nineteenth–Century German and Polish Historians on the Holy Roman Empire and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

A critical analysis of Polish cinema and literature during the transformative late Socialist period of the 1970s and 1980s. Krakus details how conceptions of time, permanence, and endings shaped major Polish artistic works. She also shows how film and literature played a major role in shaping political consciousness during this highly charged era.

From Citizens to Subjects challenges the common assertion in historiography that Enlightenment-era centralization and rationalization brought progress and prosperity to all European states, arguing instead that centralization failed to improve the socio-economic position of urban residents in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth over a 100-year period. Murphy examines the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the several imperial administrations that replaced it after the Partitions, comparing and contrasting their relationships with local citizenry, minority communities, and nobles who enjoyed considerable autonomy in their management of the cities of present-day Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Metropolitan Belgrade presents a socio-cultural history of the city as an entertainment mecca during the 1920s and 1930s. It unearths the ordinary and extraordinary leisure activities that captured the attention of urban residents and considers the broader role of popular culture in interwar society.

Between three and four thousand civilians, primarily Serbian and Jewish, were murdered in the Novi Sad massacre of 1942. Hungarian soldiers and gendarmes carried out the crime in the city and surrounding areas, in territory Hungary occupied after the German attack on Yugoslavia. The perpetrators believed their acts to be a contribution to a new order in Europe, and as a means to ethnically cleanse the occupied lands. This book examines public contentions over the Novi Sad massacre from its inception in 1942 until the final trial in 2011. It shows how attitudes changed over time toward this war crime and the Holocaust through different political regimes and in Hungarian society.

Books Are Weapons shows how the independent press, rooted in the long Polish tradition of well-organized resistance to foreign occupation, reshaped this tradition to embrace non-violent civil resistance while creating a network which evolved from a small group of dissidents into a broad opposition movement with cross-national ties and millions of sympathizers. It was the galvanizing force in the resistance to communism and the rebuilding of Poland’s democratic society in the 1980s.

Polish journalist Pawel Pieniazek was among the first journalists to enter the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine and spent over two years there. Greetings from Novorossiya is his vivid firsthand account of the conflict. His fluency in both Ukrainian and Russian granted him access and the ability to move among all sides in the conflict. He was the first reporter to reach the scene when Russian troops in Ukraine accidentally shot down a civilian airliner, killing all 298 people aboard. With powerful color photos, telling interviews from the local population, and brilliant reportage, Pieniazek’s account documents these dramatic events as they transpired. Originally published in Polish, this unique view of history in the making brings to life the tragedy of Ukraine for a Western audience.

Following the 1992 breakup of Yugoslavia, the region descended into a series of bloody conflicts marked by intense ethnic and religious hatreds. Kosovo emerged at the epicenter of these disputes and the site of innumerable human rights violations, as Serbia, united with Montenegro at the time, sought to remove the Albanian presence. Kosovo (roughly ninety percent Albanian) declared independence in 2008, and although it is recognized by over one hundred UN member states, it is still not recognized by Serbia. This volume brings together scholars of Serbian, Albanian, Christian, and Muslim backgrounds to examine the Serbian-Albanian dynamic in Kosovo through historical, political, economic, and social perspectives.

This innovative study views the aftermath of ethnic cleansing, as it examines the transformation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland from the end of the Second World War, through the Cold War, and into the twenty-first century.

Finalist, 2016 National Jewish Book Award (Holocaust category)

Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Holocaust in Croatia recounts the history of the Croatian Jewish community during the Second World War with a focus on the city of Zagreb. The authors’ accessible narrative, here available in English for the first time, has been praised for its objectivity, and is complemented by a large bibliography offering an outstanding referential source to archival materials. As such, this book stands as the definitive account of the Jews in Croatia, up to and including the criminal acts perpetrated by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, and adds significantly to our knowledge of the Holocaust.