Podcasts by New Books in Eastern European Studies
Interviews with Scholars of Eastern Europe about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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On Sholem Aleichem’s "The Tevye Stories" from 2022-08-12T08:00
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 hit movie. But the musical itself was an adapta...
ListenGale Stokes, “The Walls Came Tumbling Down” (2nd Edition, Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Europe may currently be in crisis and riven with divisions, but at least it’s a Europe of independent states. It was not always so. The Soviets dominated Eastern Europe for nearly half a century fo...
ListenElizabeth Gowing, “Travels in Blood and Honey: Becoming a Beekeeper in Kosovo” ( from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The hardest part of living in a foreign land is crossing that invisible divide between being an outsider and getting to know a country properly. An old foreign correspondent friend of mine said tha...
ListenTimothy Snyder, “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” (Basic Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Neville Chamberlain described Czechoslovakia as a far away land we know little about. He could have said it about any of the countries of east-central Europe. Yet, for the Soviet Union and Nazi Ger...
ListenRichard C. Hall, “The Modern Balkans: A History” (Reaktion Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some parts of the world seem to suffer from rather too much history. The Balkans, that mountainous peninsula situated between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, is most certainly one of them. Perhaps ...
ListenMatthew Kelly, “Finding Poland: From Tavistock to Hruzdowa and Back Again” (Jonathan Cape, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Very little illustrates history as well as the personal story. For all of the wars, deportations and suffering of the mid Twentieth Century, it’s only when there are real people that the figures co...
ListenMichael A. Reynolds, “Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of us live in a world of nations. If you were born and live in the Republic of X, then you probably speak X-ian, are a citizen of X, and would gladly fight and die for your X-ian brothers and ...
ListenYohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew” (Yale UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I’ve got a name for you: Robert Zimmerman (aka Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham). You’ve heard of him. He was a Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. But he didn’t (as the stereotype would suggest) become a...
ListenStephen Kotkin, “Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment” (Modern Library, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why did communism collapse so rapidly in Eastern Europe in 1989? The answer commonly given at the time was that something called “civil society,” having grown mighty in the 1980s, overthrew it. I’v...
ListenPadraic Kenney, “1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War’s End” (Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are certain dates that every European historian knows. Among them are 1348 (The Black Death), 1517 (The Reformation), 1648 (The Peace of Westphalia), 1789 (The French Revolution), 1848 (The R...
ListenTimothy Snyder, “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke” (Basic Books, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tim Snyder has written a great book. It’s called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (Basic, 2008). Of course it’s thoroughly researched. Tim’s read all the literature and visit...
ListenErica Marat, "The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (Oxford University Press, 2018), Erica Marat provides an answer to a very important question: “What do...
ListenThomas Fleischman, "Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany p...
ListenY. Gorlizski and O. Khlevniuk, "Substate Dictatorship Networks, Loyalty, and Institutional Change in the Soviet Union" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Starting after the Second World War and taking the story through to the Brezhnev era, Yoram Gorlizski and Oleg Khlevniuk's Substate Dictatorship Networks, Loyalty, and Institutional Change in the S...
ListenAndrew Demshuk, "Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2020) illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve o...
ListenNoel Malcolm, "Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sir Noel Malcolm’s captivating new book, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2019), tells the story of Western European fa...
ListenRachel Manekin, "The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, over three hundred young Jewish women from Orthodox, mostly Hasidic, homes in Western Galicia (now Poland) fled their communities and sought re...
ListenAlexey Golubev, "The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia (Cornell UP, 2020) is a social and cultural history of material objects and spaces during the late socialist era. It traces the biographies of ...
ListenH. Shelest and M. Rabinovych, "Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The articles presented in Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) aim to explore the current political and administrative challenges that ...
ListenA. Wylegala and M. Glowacka-Grajper, "The Burden of the Past: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine" (Indiana UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a century marked by totalitarian regimes, genocide, mass migrations, and shifting borders, the concept of memory in Eastern Europe is often synonymous with notions of trauma. In Ukraine, memory ...
ListenJessica Zychowicz, "Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine" (U Toronto Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2020) tells the unique story of a generation of artists, feminists, and queer activist...
ListenStephen Wall, "Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In January 2020, the UK became the first country to leave the European Union after a troubled 47-year membership. What was at the core of the country’s semi-detachment to the EU? Was the UK’s event...
ListenPatrick Honohan, "Currency, Credit and Crisis: Central Banking in Ireland and Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For readers – including non-economists – who want to get to grips with the nature and scale of the last financial crisis, how it was managed and mismanaged, and its particular impact on a small, op...
ListenJeremy Black, "The Holocaust: History and Memory" (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The event that is commonly labeled as the ‘Holocaust’, was one of the most horrific of the Twentieth Century. It is also one of the most popularly discussed events of both the past and the current ...
ListenSheri Berman, "Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the end of the twentieth century, many believed the story of European political development had come to an end. Modern democracy began in Europe, but for hundreds of years it competed with vario...
ListenJennifer J. Carroll, "Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Against the backdrop of a post-Soviet state set aflame by geopolitical conflict and violent revolution, Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2019) considers whether subst...
ListenDavid R. Marples, "Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir" (E-International Relations, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David R. Marples' new book Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir (E-International Relations, 2020) describes the author's academic journey from an undergraduate in London to his current resea...
ListenJohn Connelly, "From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Connelly’s new book – From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2020) – is an encyclopedic but lively narrative that captivates both those familiar wi...
ListenKenneth Austin, "The Jews and the Reformation" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kenneth Austin, who teaches history at the University of Bristol, UK, is well-known for his work on Jews and Judaism in early modern Europe. His new book, The Jews and the Reformation (Yale Univers...
ListenAnita Kurimay, "Queer Budapest, 1873-1961" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
By the dawn of the twentieth century, Budapest was a burgeoning cosmopolitan metropolis. Known at the time as the “Pearl of the Danube,” it boasted some of Europe’s most innovative architectural an...
ListenJovana Babovi?, "Metropolitan Belgrade: Culture and Class in Interwar Yugoslavia" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jovana Babovi?’s Metropolitan Belgrade: Culture and Class in Interwar Yugoslavia (University of Pittsburgh Press) examines the ways in which middle-class Belgraders negotiated metropolitan modernit...
ListenMarco Puleri, "Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian: Hybrid Identities and Narratives in Post-Soviet Culture and Politics" (Peter Lang, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marco Puleri’s Ukrainian, Russophone, (Other) Russian: Hybrid Identities and Narratives in Post-Soviet Culture and Politics (Peter Lang, 2020) examines a complex process of identity formation in th...
ListenAdam Teller, "Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the 17th Century" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A refugee crisis of huge proportions erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled their homes, or were captured and ...
ListenMatthew Romaniello, "Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia (Cambridge University Press), Matthew Romaniello examines the workings of the British Russia Company and the c...
ListenAndrea Pet?, "The Women of the Arrow Cross Party: Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Andrea Pet?'s book The Women of the Arrow Cross Party: Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) analyses the actions, background, connections and the even...
ListenNatan M. Meir, "Stepchildren of the Shtetl" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the ...
ListenCristina A. Bejan, "Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1930s Bucharest, some of the country's most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members i...
ListenWill Smiley, "From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2018), Will Smiley examines the emergence of rules of warfare surrounding ca...
ListenDavid Henig, "Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their rel...
ListenMark Gilbert, "European Integration: A Political History" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Awareness of the EU's undeniable past and present importance can - and has - led to complacency and hubris. There is nothing inevitable about European integration". So writes Mark Gilbert in Europ...
ListenSonya Bilocerkowycz, "On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine" (Mad Creek Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s been a difficult year in America. From plague, to protests, to politics, there have never been so many lives at stake, nor so many questions about the future of our country. Since his election...
ListenMark Cornwall, "Sarajevo 1914: Sparking the First World War" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. This key event in 20th-century history continues to fascinate the public imagination, yet few historians ...
ListenTatiana Zhurzhenko, "War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) analyzes the shaping of the commemorative space in the three post-Soviet countries that used to share commemorative practice...
ListenRoger Moorhouse, "Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historian and academic Roger Moorhouse, revisits the opening campaign of World War II, the German invasion of Poland in September 1939., in his new book Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II (B...
ListenSexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages: A Discussion with Roland Betancourt from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 2020), Roland Betancourt reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in mediev...
ListenM. Wodzi?ski and W. Spallek, "Historical Atlas of Hasidism" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Historical Atlas of Hasidism (Princeton UP, 2018) is the first cartographic reference book on one of the modern era’s most vibrant and important mystical movements. Featuring seventy-four large...
ListenDiana T. Kudaibergenova, "Toward Nationalizing Regimes: Conceptualizing Power and Identity in the Post-Soviet Realm" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The collapse of the Soviet Union famously opened new venues for the theories of nationalism and the study of processes and actors involved in these new nation-building processes. In Toward National...
ListenKiran Klaus Patel, "Project Europe: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Project Europe made waves when it was published in German in 2018 (CH Beck) and was soon translated into English as Project Europe: A History (Cambridge UP, 2020). A clue to its crossover appeal ca...
ListenJeremy Black, "War in Europe: 1450 to the Present" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
War in Europe: 1450 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) is a masterful overview of war and military development in Europe since 1450, bringing together the work of a renowned historian of mo...
ListenKonstantina Zanou, "Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850: Stammering the Nation" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Konstantina Zanou is an Assistant Professor of Italian and Mediterranean Studies at Columbia University. Her captivating book Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850: Stammering th...
ListenFrancine Hirsch, "Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did an authoritarian regime help lay the cornerstones of human rights and international law? Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal? (Oxford Univers...
ListenJi?í Hute?ka, "Men Under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918" (Berghahn Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In historical writing on World War I, Czech-speaking soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian military are typically studied as Czechs, rarely as soldiers, and never as men. As a result, the questi...
ListenHope M. Harrison, "After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Hope M. Harrison examines the history and meaning of the Be...
ListenStephan Talty, "The Good Assassin" (HMH, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
History that reads like a thriller; The Good Assassin: How A Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down The Butcher of Latvia (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020) by Stephan Talty is the untold ...
ListenDominique Kirchner Reill, "The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire (Harvard UP, 2020) recasts what we know about the birth of fascism, the rise of nationalism, and the fall of empire after World War I by te...
ListenYitzhak Lewis, "Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity" (SUNY Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772–1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the for...
ListenGabriel Finder, "Justice behind the Iron Curtain: Nazis on Trial in Communist Poland" (U Toronto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Americans think about trials of Holocaust perpetrators, they generally think of the Nuremberg Trials or the trial of Adolf Eichmann or perhaps of the Frankfort trials of perpetrators from Ausc...
ListenPaul D’Anieri, "Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul D’Anieri’s Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War (Cambridge University Press, 2019) documents in a nuanced way the development of the current military conflict between Russ...
ListenWhy Did the Allies Win World War One? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Great War was perhaps the greatest single upheaval of the 20th century. While World War II saw more lives lost, in terms of the shock to European/Western civilization, the Great War was a more ...
ListenMartina Cvajner, "Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration" (U Chicago, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jana Byars talks with Martina Cvajner, Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Trento, about her new book, Soviet Signoras: Pers...
ListenAlexander Gendler, "Khurbm 1914-1922: Prelude to the Holocaust" (Varda Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The murder of two-thirds of European Jews, referred to by many as the Holocaust, did not begin June 22, 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, or September 1, 1939, with the beginning ...
ListenStanislav Kulchytsky, "The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor" (CIUS Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Stanislav Kulchytsky’s The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor (CIUS Press, 2018) presents a meticulous research that unveils the mechanism of the Holodomor as a man-made fa...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenAndrei Kushnir, "Epic Journey: Life and Times of Wasyl Kushnir" (Academic Studies Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Epic Journey: Life and Times of Wasyl Kushnir (Academic Studies Press, 2020), Andrei Kushnir documents the story of his father, Wasyl Kushnir, who was born in the western part of Ukraine in 1923...
ListenAnthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’s Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor (Zantedeschi Boo...
ListenElissa Bemporad, "Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of antisemitism in Europe stretches back as far as Ancient Rome, but persecutions of Jews became widespread during the Crusades, beginning in the early 11th century when the wholesale m...
ListenAlex Jeffrey, "The Edge of Law: Legal Geographies of a War Crimes Court" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happens when a court tries to become a “new” court? What happens to the many artifacts of its history—previous laws and jurisprudence, the building that it inhabits, the people who weave in an...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenAlexander Watson, "The Fortress: The Siege of Przemysl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands" (Basic Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The opposing powers had already suffered casualties on a scale previously unimaginable by October 1914. On both the Western and Eastern fronts elaborate war plans lay in ruins and had been discarde...
ListenKevin O'Connor, "The House of Hemp and Butter: A History of Old Riga" (NIUP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Latvia's elegant capital, Riga, is one of Europe's best-kept secrets. Strategically located on the Eastern Baltic coast at the mouth of the River Daugava, Riga was founded in the early 13th century...
ListenSir John Redwood, "We Don't Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently" (Bite-Sized Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In We Don't Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently (Bite-Sized Book, 2019), Sir John Redwood gives us fresh insights into why the populist movements and parties ...
ListenGreat Books: Amir Eshel on Paul Celan's Poetry from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Celan's poetry marks the end of European modernism: he is the last poet of the era where the poetic "I" could center a subjective vision of the world through language. Celan bears witness to t...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenIrina Georgescu, "Carpathia: Food from the Heart of Romania” (Interlink Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Romania is a land of crossroads: of empire, of geography, and culture, shaped by centuries of rule by the Greeks, Ottomans, and Hapsburgs. The dramatically different geographic regions of Romania i...
ListenDavid Stahel, "Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942" (FSG, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as the Wehrmacht's first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow: A New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941-1942 (FSG, 2019), David Stahel argu...
ListenSteven Seegel, "Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Steven Seegel’s Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is an insightful contribution to the history of map m...
ListenJessie Labov, "Transatlantic Central Europe: Contesting Geography and Redefining Culture beyond the Nation" (Central European UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it ha...
ListenNancy Sinkoff, "From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History" (Wayne State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History (Wayne State University Press, 2020) is the first comprehensive biography of Dawidowicz (1915-...
ListenPaul Hanebrink, "A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard University Press, 2018), Paul Hanebrink, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, traces the complex histor...
ListenThe Origins of World War One from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who or what originated and/or caused the Great War from breaking out in July 1914? Was it Serbia with its expansionist and aggressive designs on Austria-Hungary? Was it Austria-Hungary itself, unne...
ListenLarry Wolff, "Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where the victorious Allied powers met to reenvision the map of Europe in the aftermath of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson's influence on the remapping of ...
ListenOlivier Roy, "Is Europe Christian?" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Olivier Roy, who is professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, is one of the most influential analysts of religion and secula...
ListenSarah Abrevaya Stein, "A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sarah Abrevaya Stein weaves a narrative tapestry whose threads are drawn from the archives of ...
ListenAliide Naylor, "The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front" (I.B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Baltics are about to be thrust onto the world stage. With a 'belligerent' Vladimir Putin to their east (and 'expansionist' NATO to their west), Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are increasingly th...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenAlex J. Kay and David Stahel, "Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex J. Kay (senior lecture of History at Potsdam University in Berlin) and David Stahel (senior lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales in Canberra) have edited a groundbreaking s...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenWulf Gruner, "The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses" (Berghahn Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Holocaust research tends to concentrate on certain geographic regions. We know much about the Holocaust in Poland, Germany and Western Europe. We are learning more and more about the 'Holocaust by ...
ListenAstrid M. Eckert, "West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did the Iron Curtain shape the Federal Republic of Germany? How did the internal border become a proving ground for rival ideologies? West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, an...
ListenGediminas Lankauskas, "The Land of Weddings and Rain: Nation and Modernity in Post-Socialist Lithuania" (U Toronto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gediminas Lankauskas’ new book The Land of Weddings and Rain: Nation and Modernity in Post-Socialist Lithuania (University of Toronto Press, 2015) is “an ethnography concerned with the ambiguities,...
ListenChristopher A. Molnar, "Memory, Politics, and Yugoslav Migrations to Postwar Germany" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis, more than a hundred thousand asylum seekers from the western Balkans sought refuge in Germany. This was nothing new, however; immigrants from the Balkans have s...
ListenThe Treaty of Versailles One Hundred Years On from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Versailles Treaty of 1919, celebrates its one-hundred anniversary this year. And, yet unlike the more recent centenaries, such as that of the outbreak of the Great War or the Russian Revolution...
ListenApril Eisman, "Bernhard Heisig and the Fight for Modern Art in East Germany" (Camden House, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book, Bernhard Heisig and the Fight for Modern Art in East Germany (Camden House, 2018), April Eisman examines one of East Germany's most successful artists as a point of entry into the vibr...
ListenGiuliana Chamedes, "A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Giuliana Chamedes' new book A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe (Harvard University Press, 2019) explores how World War I galvanized the central government ...
ListenJelena Suboti?, "Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Suboti? asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled?ignored, ap...
ListenKatya Cengel, "From Chernobyl with Love" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Katya Cengel’s From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) is an engaging memoir of a Western newspaper reporter’s youthful experienc...
ListenOleksandra Humenna, "Ukraine 2030: The Doctrine of Sustainable Development" (ADEF-Ukraine, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ukraine 2030: The Doctrine of Sustainable Development (ADEF-Ukraine LTD, 2018) offers a program that includes complex strategies for the economic development of Ukraine. This program was developed ...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenEmanuela Grama, "Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Focusing on Romania from 1945 to 2016, Emanuela Grama's new book Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania (Indiana University Press, 2019) explores the socialist state's attemp...
ListenSrdja Popovic, "Blueprint for Revolution" (Spiegel and Grau, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
20 years ago, Srdja Popovic was part of a revolution — literally. He was a founding member of the Otpor! movement that ousted Serbia Slobodan Milsovic from power in 1999. It’s easy to characterize ...
ListenMila Dragojevi?, "Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does violence against civilians become permissible in wartime? Why do some communities experience violence while others do not? In her new book, Mila Dragojevi? develops the concept of amoral c...
ListenDaniel Schwartz, "Ghetto: The History of a Word" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The word “ghetto” has taken on different meanings since its coinage in the 16th century. The uses of this term have varied considerably, from its original understanding as a compulsory Jewish quart...
ListenMichael Khodarkovsky, "Russia's 20th Century: A Journey in 100 Histories" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dissecting and digesting the history of the Soviet "experiment" can be a frustrating exercise for academics and a Sisphyan task for laymen; the endeavor demands scrutiny of the facts — and they are...
ListenDaniel Reynolds, "Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Millions of tourists visit Holocaust museums and memorials every year. Holocaust tourism is a thriving industry and plays a crucial role in Holocaust memorialization and remembrance. However, Holoc...
ListenDonald Ostrowski, "Europe, Byzantium, and the 'Intellectual Silence' of Rus’ Culture" (Arc Humanities Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Europe, Byzantium, and the “Intellectual Silence” of Rus’ Culture (Arc Humanities Press, 2018), Dr. Donald Ostrowski pens a fresh look at an old question: Why did intellectual path of Medieval R...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenTamara Hundorova, "The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s" (ASP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tamara Hundorova’s The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s (Academic Studies Press, 2019) is a compelling study of the literary changes that mark Ukrainian literature at th...
ListenAndrea Bohlman, "Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland (Oxford University Press, 2020) by Andrea Bohlman is a study of the music of dissent and protest during the Solidar...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenKathryn Ciancia, "On Civilization's Edge: A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a resurgent Poland emerged at the end of World War I, an eclectic group of Polish border guards, state officials, military settlers, teachers, academics, urban planners, and health workers desce...
ListenVladimir Dzuro, "The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Vladimir Dzuro, a retired Czech police commissioner, provides a first-hand look at the establishmen...
ListenLenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University Press, 2019), Lenny Ureña Valerio offers a trans...
ListenPerin Gürel, "The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey" (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In today’s podcast, host Robert Elliott speaks with Dr. Perin Gürel about her new book The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey(Columbia University Press, 2017), which ...
ListenDavid Nasaw, "The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War" (Penguin, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In May 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of global military conflict did not cease with the German capitulation. Mi...
ListenJasper Heinzen, "Making Prussians, Raising Germans: A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866-1935" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does civil war shape state building and national identity over the long term? What do the underlying conflicts between Hanoverians and the Prussian state reveal about the course of German histo...
ListenF. B. Chang and S. T. Rucker-Chang, "Roma Rights and Civil Rights: A Transatlantic Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
F. B. Chang and S. T. Rucker-Chang's Roma Rights and Civil Rights: A Transatlantic Comparison (Cambridge UP, 2020) tackles the movements for - and expressions of - equality for Roma in Central and ...
ListenAlma Jefti?, "Social Aspects of Memory: Stories of Victims and Perpetrators from Bosnia-Herzegovina" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Social Aspects of Memory: Stories of Victims and Perpetrators from Bosnia-Herzegovina (Routledge, 2019). Alma Jefti? presents the compelling results of an empirical psychological s...
ListenCarol Rittner and John K. Roth, "Advancing Holocaust Studies" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I think this is the fifth time I've interviewed John K. Roth for the podcast (and the second for Carol Rittner). He has always been relentlessly realistic about the challenges, intellectual, practi...
ListenA. Lakhtikova, A. Brintlinger, and I. Glushchenko, "Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In their introduction to Seasoned Socialism: Gender & Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life (Indiana University Press, 2019), Anastasia Lakhtikova, Angela Brintlinger, and Irina Glushchenko invite the ...
ListenGábor Scheiring, "The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hungary" (Palgrave, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Donald Trump's presidency draws to a close, his opponents give thanks that he never developed a strategy or learned to use his powers and agencies efficiently. If he had, like Hungary's four-ter...
ListenJames W. Pardew, "Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans" (U Kentucky Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans (University of Kentucky Press, 2017), Ambassador James W. Pardew describes the role of the U.S. involvement in e...
ListenSerhy Yekelchyk, "Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2020, Oxford University Press published a second edition of Serhy Yekelchyk’s Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2020). This series is based on the reference format that allows to ...
ListenSergei Zhuk, "Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists" (I.B. Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sergei Zhuk’s Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists (Tauris, 2018) offers an insightful investigation of the development of American studies in the Soviet Uni...
ListenOlena Palko, "Making Ukraine Soviet: Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Olena Palko’s Making Ukraine Soviet: Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (Bloomsbury Academic Press 2020) offers an intriguing investigation that zeroes in on the intersection o...
ListenCaroline Boggis-Rolfe, "The Baltic Story: A Thousand Year History of Its Lands, Sea, and Peoples" (Amberley, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of the littoral nations of the Baltic Sea is like a saga, that genre perfected by those tenacious inhabitants of the rocky shores of this ancient trading corridor. In it, we meet pirates...
ListenLeslie Waters, "Borders on the Move: Territorial Change and Forced Migration in the Hungarian-Slovak Borderlands, 1938-1948" (U Rochester Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The movement of borders and people was a remarkably common experience for mid-twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europeans. Such was the case along the border between Czechoslovakia and Hungary,...
ListenStephen Hardy and Andrew Holman, "Hockey: A Global History" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Stephen Hardy, retired professor of kinesiology and affiliate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, and Andrew Holman, professor of history at and the dire...
ListenMyroslav Shkandrij, "Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory" (Academic Studies Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Myroslav Shkandrij’s Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory (Academic Studies Press, 2019) offers an insight into the development of the Ukrainian avant-garde, a topic which still ...
ListenErik Sjöberg, "The Making of the Greek Genocide: Contested Memories of the Ottoman Greek Catastrophe" (Berghahn Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of the time, memory studies focuses on well-known case studies. The result Is that we know lots about commemoration and memory regarding the Holocaust, about slavery, about apartheid, and oth...
ListenAnna Hájková, "The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anna Hájková's new book The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (Oxford UP, 2020) is the first in-depth analytical history of a prisoner society during the Holocaust. Terezín (Theres...
ListenKristen Ghodsee, "Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I am a child of the so-called transition in Bulgaria and growing-up I could never understand why my parents and grandparents would spend our family gatherings talking about the socialist past. It w...
ListenAdam Fabry, "The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Adam Fabry's book The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2019) explores the political economy of Hungary from the mid-1970s to the present...
ListenKristen R. Ghodsee, "Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Last week, I had the privilege to talk with Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee about her most recent book Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War (Duke Un...
ListenVahram Ter-Matevosyan, "Turkey, Kemalism and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Vahram Ter-Matevosyan new book Turkey, Kemalism and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation (Palgrave Macmillan, examines the Kemalist ideology of Turkey from two ...
ListenSafet HadžiMuhamedovi?, "Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape" (Berghahn Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Set in the beautiful, sprawling Field of Gacko in southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Safet HadžiMuhamedovi?’s book Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape (Berghahn Books, 2...
ListenNorman Eisen, "The Last Palace: Europe's Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House" (Crown, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As we’ve previously discussed, there are a lot of books about democracy filling book store and library shelves right now. Norman Eisen could have written a book in the vein of Daniel Ziblatt and St...
ListenTimothy A. Sayle, "Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization regularly appears in newspapers and political science scholarship. Surprisingly, historians have yet to devote the attention that the organization’s history m...
ListenJohn J. Curley, "Global Art and the Cold War" (Laurence King Publishers, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It was the passionate amateur painter, Winston Churchill, who introduced one of the Cold War’s key metaphors: The Iron Curtain. As John J. Curley argues in Global Art and the Cold War (Laurence Kin...
ListenJeremy Black, "The World at War, 1914-1945" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In one of his latest books, The World at War, 1914-1945 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Professor of History at Exeter University, Jeremy Black, the most prolific historian in the Anglo-phone world, ...
ListenKate Brown, "Manuel for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We cannot learn from disasters we do not yet understand. That conviction motivated historian Kate Brown to conduct groundbreaking research into nuclear energy’s most infamous chapter and write Manu...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenT. Troianowska and A. Polakowska, "Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918" (U Toronto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918 (University of Toronto Press, 2018) consists of sixty essays written by authors from all over the world who specialize in Pol...
ListenCatherine Baker, “Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial?” (Manchester UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Catherine Baker’s fascinating new book poses a deceptively simple question: what does race have to do with the Yugoslav region? Eastern European studies has often framed the region as unimplicated ...
ListenDaniel Unowsky, “The Plunder: The 1898 Anti-Jewish Riots in Habsburg Galicia” (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Daniel Unowsky's book isn't about a genocide or other incident of mass violence. Instead, The Plunder examines a series of riots against Jews in Habsburg Galicia in the year 1898. Unowsky tries t...
ListenJessica Trisko Darden, Alexis Henshaw, and Ora Szekley, "Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars" (Georgetown UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2019), investigates the mobilization of female fighters, women’s roles in combat, and what happens to women when confl...
ListenTim Mohr, "Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Algonquin Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Algonquin Books, 2018), Tim Mohr examines East Germany punk rock and its role in the collapse of the East German di...
ListenThomas Borchert, “Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border” (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What makes a Buddhist monk? This is the motivating question for Thomas Borchert, Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, as he explores the social and educational formation of Buddhists...
ListenAleksandr V. Gevorkyan, "Transition Economies: Transformation, Development, and Society in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We spoke with the author Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan. His book Transition Economies: Transformation, Development, and Society in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Routledge, 2018) is a very in...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenLaszlo Borhi, "Dealing with Dictators: The United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe 1942-1989" (Indiana UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does a political regime function? What contributes to a regime’s longevity and subversion? Laszlo Borhi’s Dealing with Dictators: The United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe 1942-1989(I...
ListenLee Bidgood, “Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Although bluegrass music is typically associated with the bluegrass state of Kentucky and Appalachia, the genre is actually played in many pockets all around the world. In Czech Bluegrass: Notes f...
ListenNaomi Seidman, “The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell In Love With Love, And With Literature” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell In Love With Love, And With Literature (Stanford University Press, 2016), Naomi Seidman, Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Arts at the University of Toront...
ListenJenifer Parks, “The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sport Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape” (Lexington Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we are joined by Jenifer Parks, Associate Professor of History at Rocky Mountain College. Parks is the author of The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sport Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, ...
ListenDavid E. Fishman, “The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis” (ForeEdge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis (ForeEdge, 2017), David E. Fishman, Professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in N...
ListenIvan Simic, “Soviet Influences on Postwar Yugoslav Gender Policies” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Soviet Influences on Postwar Yugoslav Gender Policies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Ivan Simic explores how Yugoslav communists learned, adapted, and applied Soviet gender policies in...
ListenRaz Segal, “Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown and Mass Violence, 1914-1945” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Telling the history of the Holocaust in Hungary has long meant telling the story of 1944. Raz Segal, in his new book Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown and Mass Violence, 1914-1945...
ListenJonathan Waterlow, “It’s Only a Joke, Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life Under Stalin (1928-1941)” (CreateSpace, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Waterlow’s new book It’s Only a Joke, Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life Under Stalin (1928-1941) (CreateSpace, 2018) delves into the previously understudied realm of humor in the St...
ListenAzra Hromadži?, “Citizens of an Empty Nation: Youth and State-Making in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite all the buzz about the reconstruction of Mostar’s beautiful Old Bridge, Mostar remains a largely divided city, with Bosniaks on one side and Croats on the other. In Citizens of an Empty Nat...
ListenLarisa Jašarevi?, “Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarevi? traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-He...
ListenEliyahu Stern, “Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s (Yale University Press, 2018) is a radical new book that uncovers a hitherto ignored intellectual movement in Jewish Eastern Europe, and...
ListenWilliam D. Godsey, “The Sinews of Habsburg Power: Lower Austria in a Fiscal-Military State, 1650-1820” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria established itself as one of the dominant powers of Europe, despite possessing much more limited fiscal resources when compared to its counterparts. In T...
ListenAdis Maksic, “Ethnic Mobilization, Violence, and the Politics of Affect: The Serb Democratic Party and the Bosnian War” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Within the space of only six months in 1990, the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) managed to win the majority of the Serb vote in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In his new book, Ethnic Mobilization, Violence, and ...
ListenAndrii Danylenko, “From the Bible to Shakespeare: Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819-1897) and the Formation of Literary Ukrainian” (Academic Studies Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does a language develop? What are the factors and processes that shape a language and reflect the changes it undergoes? These seemingly routine questions entail a conversation that involves not...
ListenWaitman Beorn, “The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of the Jews and other victims the Nazis murdered in the Holocaust were from Eastern Europe, and the vast majority of the actual killing was done there. In his new book, The Holocaust in Easte...
ListenWojtek Sawa, “The Wall Speaks: Voices of the Unheard” (National Center of Culture, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Wojtek Sawa‘s The Wall Speaks: Voices of the Unheard (National Center of Culture, 2016) is a bilingual Polish-English project that engages with the intricacies of remembering and forgetting as part...
ListenAnika Walke, “Pioneers and Partisans: An Oral History of Nazi Genocide in Belorussia” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did Soviet Jews respond to the Holocaust and the devastating transformations that accompanied persecution? How was the Holocaust experienced, survived, and remembered by Jewish youth living in ...
ListenErica Lehrer, “Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places” (Indiana UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sometime in the very early 1990s, while I was in grad school, I got a call from a student at Grinnell College, where I myself had graduated asking me about studying Poland. It was an engaging chat ...
ListenMarie E. Berry, “War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can war change women’s political mobilization? Using Rwanda and Bosnia as case studies Marie E. Berry answers these questions and more in her powerful new book, War, Women, and Power: From Viol...
ListenSteven J. Zipperstein, “Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History” (Liveright/Norton, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In what has become perhaps the most infamous example of modern anti-Jewish violence prior to the Holocaust, the Kishinev pogrom should have been a small story lost to us along with scores of other ...
ListenRuth von Bernuth, “How the Wise Men Got to Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In How the Wise Men Got to Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition (New York University Press, 2017), Ruth von Bernuth, Associate Professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic La...
ListenAmelia Glaser, “Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising” (Stanford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The cover of Amelia Glaser‘s new edited volume, Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising (Stanford University Press, 2015), bears a portrait of the...
ListenAnna Muller, “If the Walls Could Speak: Inside a Women’s Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today we talked to Dr. Anna Muller about her latest book, If the Walls Could Speak: Inside a Women’s Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford University Press, 2017). Using archival research as well as o...
ListenErin Hochman, “Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss” (Cornell UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (Cornell University Press, 2016), Erin Hochman, Associate Professor of Modern German and European Hist...
ListenValerie Kivelson and Ronald Suny, “Russia’s Empires” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Names can be deceiving. Americans call the area where Moscow’s writ runs “Russia.” But the official name of this place is the “Russian Federation.” Federation of what, you ask? Well, there are a lo...
ListenDavid Biale, “Hasidism: A New History” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who, or what, are Hasidim? A movement that was once mysterious and inaccessible has recently risen to the forefront of popular consciousness. Whether it be in last years acclaimed film Menashe, the...
ListenLarry Wolff, “The Singing Turk” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon (Stanford University Press, 2016), Larry Wolff takes us into that dist...
ListenDavid Gerlach, “The Economy of Ethnic Cleansing: The Transformation of German-Czech Borderlands after World War II” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Economy of Ethnic Cleansing: The Transformation of German-Czech Borderlands after World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David Gerlach, Associate Professor of History...
ListenLaura Engelstein, “Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1921” (Oxford University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1921 (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a masterful account of the Russian revolutionary era by Laura Engelstein, Professor Emerita at Yale Univer...
ListenOmer Bartov, “Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz” (Simon and Schuster, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most important developments in Holocaust Studies over the past couple decades has been one of scale. Rather than focus on decision making at the national or regional level, scholars are ...
ListenEddy Portnoy, “Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017), Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Exhibitions Curator at the YIVO Institute for Yiddish Re...
ListenSarah D. Phillips, “Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine” (Indiana UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine (Indiana University Press, 2010), Sarah D. Phillips offers a compelling investigation of disability policies and movements in Ukraine a...
ListenJoshua Rubenstein, “The Last Days of Stalin” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On March 4, 1953, Soviet citizens woke up to an unthinkable announcement: Joseph Stalin, the country’s all-powerful leader, had died of a stroke. In The Last Days of Stalin (Yale University Press, ...
ListenJayne Persian, “Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (NewSouth Publishing, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), Jayne Persian, a Lecturer in History at the University of Southern Queensland, explores the ...
ListenMichael Flier and Andrea Graziosi, eds. “The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Language is one of the complex systems facilitating communication; language is a system producing the inside and the outside of the individual’s awareness of self and other. However, language is al...
ListenBruce R. Berglund, “Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague” (CEU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Bruce R. Berglund, points out in his terrific book Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague: Longing for the Sacred in a Skeptical Age (CEU Press, 2017), the Czech Republic is an odd place, religio...
ListenAdi Gordon, “Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn” (Brandeis UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not very many intellectuals really change their minds about anything. They have a big idea, often become well known because of it. Then their big idea becomes an integral part of their identity and...
ListenEdin Hajdarpasic, “Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914” (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustratio...
ListenPieter M. Judson, “The Habsburg Empire: A New History” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pieter Judson established himself as one of the top scholars of the East Central Europe with his first two books Exclusive Revolutionaries (University of Michigan Press, 1996) and Guardians of the ...
ListenAlexander Prusin, “Serbia under the Swastika: A World War II Occupation” (U. Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Serbia under the Swastika: A World War II Occupation (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Alexander Prusin delineates the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II. He starts from the m...
ListenMykola Soroka, “Faces of Displacement: The Writings of Volodymyr Vynnychenko” (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mykola Soroka’s Faces of Displacement: The Writings of Volodymyr Vynnychenko (McGill-Queens University Press, 2012) is a compelling investigation of the oeuvre of one of the Ukrainian writers whose...
ListenMax Bergholz, “Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism and Memory in a Balkan Community” (Cornell UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
People study atrocities and mass violence for a variety of reasons. When asked, many offer thoughtful intellectual or political explanations for their choice. But in truth, the field is a practical...
ListenScott Moranda, “The People’s Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism and Dictatorship in East Germany” (U. Michigan Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The new German Democratic Republic, known as East Germany, faced many challenges when it was founded in 1949. Not least of which was convincing its citizens that they should be loyal to the new sta...
ListenBruce O’Neill, “The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order” (Duke University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order (Duke University Press, 2017) Bruce O’Neill explores how people cast aside by globalism deal with an intractable symptom of downwar...
ListenAdriana Helbig, “Hip Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration” (Indiana UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2004, during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Adriana Helbig saw African musicians rapping in Ukrainian and wearing embroidered Ukrainian ethnic costumes. Her curiosity about how these musician...
ListenGeoffrey D. Claussen, “Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar” (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Sim?ah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015), Geoffrey D. Claussen provides a thorough study of the life and work of one of the most influential figures i...
ListenFranz Nicolay, “The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar” (The New Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the punk music scene like in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, or Mongolia? Who listens to punk in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans? What kind of venues host punk shows? Punk mus...
ListenBrigitte Le Normand, “Designing Tito’s Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism, and Socialism in Belgrade” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
NB: An earlier version of this podcast has been replaced with a new file in which the the technical problems of the first were corrected. -NBn, 7/11/17 At the end of World War II, Belgrade, the ca...
ListenSteven Seegel, “Mapping Europe’s Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire” (U. of Chicago Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since the publication of this book five years ago, Steven Seegel has become a leading authority on map-making in the Russian Empire with particular expertise on the western borderlands.Mapping Euro...
ListenAndrew Sloin, “The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power (Indian University Press, 2017), Andrew Sloin, Assistant Professor of History at Baruch College of the City University of ...
ListenAna Miskovska Kajevska, “Feminist Activism at War: Belgrade and Zagreb Feminists in the 1990s” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Feminist Activism at War: Belgrade and Zagreb Feminists in the 1990s (Routledge, 2017), Macedonian researcher, peace-worker, and activist Ana Miskovska Kajevska analyses the way feminists in Bel...
ListenJames Heinzen, “The Art of the Bribe: Corruption Under Stalin, 1943-1953” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Soviet Union under Stalin was very repressive. You could get sent to a GULAG (if not shot) for casually telling an “anti-Soviet” joke or pilfering ubiquitous “state property.” But, as James Hei...
ListenWilliam D. Prigge, “Bearslayers: The Rise and Fall of the Latvian National Communists” (Peter Lang, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1959, approximately 2,000 members of the the Latvian Communist Party were purged for “nationalist tendencies.” However, the causes of their rise and their fall reached all the way to the Soviet ...
ListenEdward Westermann, “Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The intersection of colonialism and mass atrocities is one of the most exciting insights of the past years of genocide studies. But most people don’t really think of the Soviet Union and the Americ...
ListenFerenc Laczo, “Hungarian Jews in the Age of Genocide: An Intellectual History, 1929-1948” (Brill, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For non-specialists, the Holocaust in Hungary is a history both familiar and murky. Many Americans have read memoirs like Elie Wiesel’s Night and Judith Magyar Isaacson’s Seeds of Sarah in high sch...
ListenPiotr Kosicki, “Vatican II Behind the Iron Curtain” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many historians have documented the Second Vatican Council yet virtually no attention has been devoted to the Catholics who found themselves living behind an iron curtain at the end of the 1940s. P...
ListenEllie Schainker, “Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906 (Stanford University Press, 2016), Ellie Schainker, the Arthur Blank Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Histo...
ListenEdward Cohn, “The High Title of a Communist: Postwar Party Discipline and the Values of the Soviet Regime” (NIU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edward Cohn analyzes changes in Communist Party discipline in the Soviet Union from the Eighteenth Party Congress in 1939 through the 1960s in The High Title of a Communist: Postwar Party Disciplin...
ListenVioleta Davoliute, “The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War, published by Routledge, Violeta Davoliute calls Lithuania an improbably successful and paradoxically represe...
ListenRegis Darques, “Mapping Versatile Boundaries: Understanding the Balkans” (Springer, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Regis Darques‘ Mapping Versatile Boundaries: Understanding the Balkans (Springer, 2016) offers the unique mapping perspectives on the Balkan region. By exploring a range of topics such as borderlan...
ListenJelena Batinic, “Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jelena Batinic’s Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2015) examines the role women played in the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistan...
ListenMichael David-Fox, “Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union” (U Pittsburgh Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s been a quarter century since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This anniversary marks a good occasion to ask a seemingly simple question: “What was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?” Wa...
ListenMark R. Andryczyk, “The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian History” (U. of Toronto Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 2012), Mark R. Andryczyk takes his readers to an intriguing territory of dense narratives, arising from a comple...
ListenJessica Greenberg , “After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia” (Stanford University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jessica Greenberg’s After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press, 2014) explores a dual tension at work in Serbia in the early 200...
ListenGregory F. Domber, “Empowering Revolution: America, Poland, and the End of the Cold War” (U. of North Carolina Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the most populous country in Eastern Europe as well as the birthplace of the largest anticommunist dissident movement, Poland is crucial in understanding the end of the Cold War. During the 1980...
ListenAna Foteva, “Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe” (Peter Lang, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Starting with Metternich’s declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th throu...
ListenPer Anders Rudling, “The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931” (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I don’t often have a chance to read books that focus solely on Belarus, which is exactly why I was intrigued by The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931 (University of Pittsburgh Pres...
ListenAlan McDougall, “The People’s Game: Football, State and Society in East Germany” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The People’s Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Alan McDougall looks at football from the top-down and bottom-up: as a tool of the state, as forming regional ...
ListenJoshua Zimmerman, “The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some books fly high above the field, making sweeping generalizations about big questions. Other books circle over a specific problem, analyzing it in great detail to say something important about ...
ListenFriederike Kind-Kovacs, “Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain” (Central European UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain (Central European University Press, 2014) is a richly detailed description of the social practices, debates and di...
ListenTimothy Snyder, “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” (Tim Duggan Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s rare when an academic historian breaks through and becomes a central part of the contemporary cultural conversation. Timothy Snyder does just this with his book Black Earth: The Holocaust as ...
ListenGuntis Smidchens, “The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution” (University of Washington Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these movemen...
ListenGlenn Dynner, “Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland (Oxford UP, 2014), Glenn Dynner, Professor of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College, explores the world of Jewish-run taverns in nin...
ListenMichael Bernhard and Jan Kubik, eds., “Twenty Years After Communism” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For people and governments in the west the revolutions of 1989 and 1991 were happy events, and as the twentieth anniversary of those events rolled around they were to be celebrated once again with ...
ListenRoland Clark, “Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania” (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Cornell University Press, 2015) is an in-depth study of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, one of the largest and longest lasting fasci...
ListenCecile E. Kuznitz, “YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Cecile E. Kuznitz, Associate Professor of Jewish History and Director of Jewi...
ListenDavid Frick, “Kith, Kin and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in 17th-Century Wilno” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1636, King Wladyslaw IV’s quartermaster surveyed the houses of Wilno in advance of the king’s visit to the city. In Kith, Kin and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wi...
ListenTom Junes, “Student Politics in Communist Poland: Generations of Consent and Dissent” (Lexington, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the conventional narratives of Communist Poland, and Eastern Europe more generally, student activism tends to get short shrift. While the role of students in 1956 is unavoidable and widely ackno...
ListenDerek Sayer, “Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History” (Princeton UP 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Prague, according to Derek Sayer, is the place “in which modernist dreams have time and again unraveled.” In this sweeping history of surrealism centered on Prague as both a physical location and t...
ListenAnton Weiss-Wendt, “The Nazi Genocide of the Roma” (Berghahn, 2015) and “Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe” (U of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Normally I don’t try and talk about two books in the same interview. But, in discussing the interview, Anton Weiss-Wendt suggested that it made sense to pair The Nazi Genocide of the Roma (Berghah...
ListenMagda Romanska, “The Post-Traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor” (Anthem Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jerzy Grotowsky and Tadeusz Kantor were influential in avant-garde theater in the West in the 1960s and 1970s, receiving high critical regard despite the fact that audiences could not understand th...
ListenJuergen Matthaus et al., “War, Pacification and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians have spent the last two decades detailing and explaining the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. We now know much more than we used to about the escalation of violence in...
ListenJohn-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic, “Bringing the Dark Past to Light” (U of Nebraska Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I’ll be leaving soon to take students on a European travel course. During the three weeks we’ll be gone, in addition to cathedrals, museums and castles, they’ll visit Auschwitz, the Memorial to the...
ListenKatherine Lebow, “Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism and Polish Society, 1949-1956” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late 1940s, tens of thousands of people – mostly young male peasants – streamed to southeastern Poland to help build Nowa Huta, the largest and most ambitious of Stalinist “socialist cities”...
ListenHasia Diner, “Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way” (Yale University Press, 2015). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The period from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries witnessed a mass migration which carried millions of Jews from central and eastern Europe, north Africa, and the Ottoman Empire ...
ListenPaulina Bren, “The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring” (Cornell UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Major Zeman’s life is filled with action packed adventures. A young man finds his calling turning a collective farm into a shining example of agricultural efficiency. Anna embraces her role as a s...
ListenRobert J. Donia, “Radovan Karadzic: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a graduate student at Ohio State in the early 1990s, I remember watching the collapse of Yugoslavia on the news almost every night and reading about it in the newspaper the next day.The first ge...
ListenJames Mace Ward, “Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his biography of Jozef Tiso, Catholic priest and president of independent Slovakia (1939-1944), James Ward provides a deeper understanding of a man who has been both honored and vilified since h...
ListenMary C. Neuberger, “Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria” (Cornell UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
By the late 1960s, Bulgaria was the world’s number one exporter of tobacco, perhaps the pinnacle of the place of tobacco in the economic, social and political development of modern Bulgaria. In Ba...
ListenMark Corner, “The European Union: An Introduction” (I. B. Tauris, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some say it should be a loose collection of sovereign nation states; others say it should aspire to be a kind of super-nation state itself. Or is it, in truth, a messy but workable mixture of a num...
ListenWillard Sunderland, “The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution” (Cornell UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Russian Empire once extended from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan and contained a myriad of different ethnicities and nationalities. Dr. Willard Sunderland‘s The Baron’s Cloak: A History of ...
ListenAndrew Demshuk, “The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the close of the Second World War, the Allies expelled several million Germans from the eastern portion of the former Reich. Thanks to the work of many historians, we know quite a bit about Alli...
ListenEdmund Levin, “A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia” (Schocken, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There is a lot of nasty mythology about Jews, but surely the most heinous and ridiculous is the bizarre notion that “they” (as if Jews were all the same) have long been in the habit of murdering Ch...
ListenSener Akturk, “Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What processes must take place in order for countries to radically redefine who is a citizen? Why was Russia able to finally remove ethnicity from internal passports after failing to do so during s...
ListenMark Levene, “The Crisis of Genocide” (Oxford University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I imagine one of the greatest compliments an author of an historical monograph can receive is to hear that his or her book changed the way a subject is taught. I will do just that after reading Ma...
ListenGeoffrey Wawro, “A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was in graduate school, those of us who studied World War One commented regularly on the degree to which historians concentrated their attention on the Western front at the expense of the ot...
ListenAnne Gorsuch, “All This is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad After Stalin” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thirty years after a trip to the GDR, Soviet cardiologist V.I. Metelitsa still remembered mistakenly trying to buy a dress for a ten-year-old daughter in a maternity shop: ‘In our country I couldn’...
ListenJohn Roth and Peter Hayes, “The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve talked before on the show about how hard it is to enter into the field of Holocaust Studies. Just six weeks ago, for instance, I talked with Dan Stone about his thoughtful work analyzing and ...
ListenJeremy Dauber, “The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem” (Schocken, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The first comprehensive biography of famed Yiddish novelist, story writer and playwright Sholem Aleichem, Jeremy Dauber‘s welcome new book The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Aft...
ListenRobert Gellately, “Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War” (Knopf, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It takes two to tango, right? Indeed it does. But it’s also true that someone has got to ask someone else to dance before any tangoing is done. Beginning in the 1960s, the American intellectual eli...
ListenDan Stone, “Histories of the Holocaust” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I don’t think it’s possible anymore for someone, even an academic with a specialty in the field, let alone an interested amateur, to read even a fraction of the literature written about the Holocau...
ListenLuuk van Middelaar, “The Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the end of the 20th century, it looked like history was being made. After a century that had seen Europe dissolve into an orgy of bloody conflict not once but twice, the continent seemed to have...
ListenChristopher Browning, “Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp” (W. W. Norton, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Christopher Browning is one of the giants in the field of Holocaust Studies. He has contributed vitally to at least two of the basic debates in the field: the intentionalist/functionalist discussio...
ListenPaul Mojzes, “Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th Century” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I was a graduate student in the 1990s when Yugoslavia dissolved into violence. Beginning a dissertation on Habsburg history, I probably knew more about the region than most people in the US about t...
ListenMary Heimann, “Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed” (Yale UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Americans love Prague. They visit and have even moved there in considerable numbers. They like the place for a lot of reasons. One is that Prague is a very beautiful city. But another is that the C...
ListenEric Lohr, “Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Russians have a reputation for xenophobia, that is, it’s said they don’t much like foreigners. According to Eric Lohr‘s new book, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Harvard Universit...
ListenR. M. Douglas, “Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War” (Yale UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I imagine everyone who listens to this podcast knows about the Nazi effort to remake Central and Eastern Europe by expelling and murdering massive numbers of Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies. The results, ...
ListenWilliam Risch, “The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the Cold War few Westerners gave much thought to Western Ukraine, and its main city, Lviv. It was what happened in Moscow and St. Petersburg that really mattered, and so if one looked on ...
ListenMary Fulbrook, “A Small Near Town Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The question of how “ordinary Germans” managed to commit genocide is a classic (and troubling) one in modern historiography. It’s been well studied and so it’s hard to say anything new about it. Bu...
ListenPieter Judson, “Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria” (Harvard UP, 2006) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What if much of what we think we know about nationalism and the spread of the national identity over the course of the nineteenth century were wrong? This view is so widely accepted and ingrained i...
ListenAlexander Maxwell, “Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language, and Accidental Nationalism” (Tauris Academic Studies, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On 1 January 1993 Slovakia became an independent nation. According to conventional Slovak nationalist history that event was the culmination of a roughly thousand year struggle. Alexander Maxwell a...
ListenKimberly Zarecor, “Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960” (Pittsburgh UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I first went to the Soviet Union (in all my ignorance), I was amazed that everyone in Moscow lived in what I called “housing projects.” The Russians called them “houses” (doma), but they weren...
ListenMelissa Caldwell, “Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside” (University of California Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Russians’ dachas are regularly mentioned in a sentence or two in newspaper articles about life in Russia, and many of who have visited the lands of the former Soviet Union have visited dachas. Yet,...
ListenFrancis Tapon, “The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us” (WanderLearn, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of the specialists in Eastern Europe I know first got truly interested in the region after a trip, which then triggered applications to grad school, years spent reading books, and a year or tw...
ListenDavid Crowley and Susan Reid, “Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Block” (Northwestern UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We all know socialism failed in Eastern Europe and that failure reflected two great shortcomings: a lack of democracy and an economic system that consistently fell short in providing its ostensible...
ListenMary Neuburger, “The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Cornell UP, 2004) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Eastern Europe has never had the draw for scholars or tourists of France, Italy, Germany, or Great Britain, and within eastern Europe Bulgaria has invariably been overshadowed by Poland and the for...
ListenNathaniel Wood, “Becoming Metropolitan: Urban Selfhood and the Making of Modern Cracow” (Northern Illinois UP, 2010 ) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I began my graduate history, virtually all my fellow apprentice historians of eastern Europe were captivated by nationalism and focused their research accordingly. Of particular interest was ...
ListenAndrew Wilson, “Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship” (Yale UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A couple of weeks ago I took a bus from Warsaw and travelled east across the River Bug. The border took a long time to cross, but then this was no ordinary border – it was the border between the Eu...
ListenTimothy Snyder, “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke” (Basic Books, 2008) from 2008-07-03T21:45:36
Tim Snyder has written a great book. It’s called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (Basic, 2008). Of course it’s thoroughly researched. Tim’s read all the literature and visit...
ListenTimothy Snyder, “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke” (Basic Books, 2008) from 2008-07-03T21:45:36
Tim Snyder has written a great book. It’s called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (Basic, 2008). Of course it’s thoroughly researched. Tim’s read all the literature and visit...
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