Results by title

447 books match the query 'Eastern' and 12 start with h

cover of Habsburg Encounters with Native America: Familiar Strangers

Habsburg Encounters with Native America

Familiar Strangers

Jonathan Singerton

Central European University Press, 2025

The central European lands of the Habsburg monarchy have long shared an intertwined past with the Indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. This volume focuses on the process of encountering these peoples as a continual action across several centuries that has produced numerous and varied instances of cultural dialogues, perspectives, and understandings. Moreover, this central European element is something that has not been considered in its own right before now and has been overshadowed by the focus on a wider Germanic fascination for Indigenous cultures. Breaking away from this wider narrative allows us not only to recover a more distinct historical connection but also uncovers the particular dynamics of direct and indirect contact between Indigenous worlds and that of the Habsburg monarchy.
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cover of Hasidic Pilgrimages and Local Identity: Stories from Four Eastern European Towns

Hasidic Pilgrimages and Local Identity

Stories from Four Eastern European Towns

Alla Marchenko

Central European University Press, 2027

Hasidic Pilgrimages and Local Identity: Stories from Four European Towns offers a compelling account of how Jewish pilgrimage reshapes collective memory in contemporary Eastern Europe. Focusing on Uman and Belz in Ukraine, and Bobowa and Le.ajsk in Poland, the book traces how the return of Hasidic pilgrims transforms local landscapes, narratives, and identities.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, media analysis, and memory studies, the author examines how pilgrims, local residents, and institutions engage with the Jewish past in ways that are often parallel, contested, or only partially connected. Rather than forming a shared framework, these encounters produce multiple, coexisting interpretations of place and history.
By tracing patterns of cooperation, tension, and selective inclusion, this book reveals how collective memory is continuously negotiated in post-socialist contexts, offering new insights into pilgrimage, heritage, and the politics of memory in a changing Europe.
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cover of His Current Woman

His Current Woman

Jerzy Pilch

Northwestern University Press, 2002

Pawel Kohoutek, veterinarian and womanizer, looks out the window one morning to see his mistress approaching his house. That's bad. She is hauling her suitcase (containing her books) and her backpack (containing everything else she owns). That's worse. So Kohoutek does the only thing he can: He hides his current woman in the attic of the family slaughterhouse. Farce ensues as Kohoutek attempts to hide the woman from his eccentric family, their lodgers, and various offbeat visitors. A best-seller in Jerzy Pilch's native Poland, His Current Woman is an enjoyable literary send-up of what often passes for love.
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cover of History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness

History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness

Lucian Boia

Central European University Press, 2001

There is a considerable difference between real history and discourse history - this book stems from this idea. The author points out that history is constantly reconstructed, adapted and sometimes mythified from the perspective of the present day, of present states of mind and ideologies. Boia closely examines the process of historical culture and conscience in nineteenth and twentieth century Romania, particularly concentrating on the impact of the national ideology on history. Based upon his findings, the author identifies several key mythical configurations and analyses the manner in which Romanians have reconstituted their own highly ideologized history over the last two centuries.

The strength of History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness lies in the author's ability to fully deconstruct the entire Romanian historiographic system and demonstrate the increasing acuteness of national problems in general, and in particular the exploitation of history to support national ideology.

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cover of History in My Life: A Memoir of Three Eras

History in My Life

A Memoir of Three Eras

Ivan T. Berend is Distinguished Research Professor at the History Department of the University of California Los Angeles.

Central European University Press, 2009

Ivan T. Berend is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Director of the European Studies Program. He was one of the masterminds of regime change in Hungary. He made a career in Hungary as a university professor, Rector of the University of Economics (1973–79), and President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985–90). He was President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995–2000), and Vice-President of the International Economic History Association (1986–1994). His research interests are the complex economic, social, ideological, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th–20th century; economic modernization; problems of European backwardness; transition from state socialism to capitalism. He published and 26 books and more than 120 studies.

Before he became a professor at UCLA, Ivan Berend had survived five regime changes and two revolutions in Hungary, had been in prison and German concentration camp in 1944–45.

His memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the “objective” historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within.

Berend’s book raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness’ insights on life in the United States.

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cover of History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453, Volume I

History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453, Volume I

Alexander A. Vasiliev

University of Wisconsin Press, 1958

“This is the revised English translation from the original work in Russian of the history of the Great Byzantine Empire.  It is the most complete and thorough work on this subject.  From it we get a wonderful panorama of the events and developments of the struggles of early Christianity, both western and eastern, with all of its remains of the wonderful productions of art, architecture, and learning.”—Southwestern Journal of Theology
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cover of History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453, Volume II

History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453, Volume II

Alexander A. Vasiliev

University of Wisconsin Press, 1958

“This is the revised English translation from the original work in Russian of the history of the Great Byzantine Empire.  It is the most complete and thorough work on this subject.  From it we get a wonderful panorama of the events and developments of the struggles of early Christianity, both western and eastern, with all of its remains of the wonderful productions of art, architecture, and learning.”—Southwestern Journal of Theology
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cover of Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain

Hot Books in the Cold War

The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain

Alfred A. Reisch

Central European University Press, 2013

This study reveals the hidden story of the secret book distribution program to Eastern Europe financed by the CIA during the Cold War. At its height between 1957 and 1970, the book program was one of the least known but most effective methods of penetrating the Iron Curtain, reaching thousands of intellectuals and professionals in the Soviet Bloc. Reisch conducted thorough research on the key personalities involved in the book program, especially the two key figures: S. S. Walker, who initiated the idea of a “mailing project,” and G. C. Minden, who developed it into one of the most effective political and psychological tools of the Cold War. The book includes excellent chapters on the vagaries of censorship and interception of books by communist authorities based on personal letters and accounts from recipients of Western material. It will stand as a testimony in honor of the handful of imaginative, determined, and hard-working individuals who helped to free half of Europe from mental bondage and planted many of the seeds that germinated when communism collapsed and the Soviet bloc disintegrated.
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cover of House of Day, House of Night

House of Day, House of Night

Olga Tokarczuk

Northwestern University Press, 2003

The English translation of the prize-winning international bestseller
Winner of the Gunter Grass Prize

Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she and discovers everyone-and everything-has its own story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the tale of the man who causes international tension when he dies on the border, one leg on the Polish side, the other on the Czech side. Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place--no matter how humble--is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one's self and one's dreams but also with all of the universe.

Richly imagined, weaving in anecdote with recipes and gossip, Tokarczuk's novel is an epic of a small place. Since its original publication in 1998 it has remained a bestseller in Poland. House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe's best young writers.
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cover of Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority's Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–1945

Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood

A Minority's Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–1945

R. Chris Davis

University of Wisconsin Press, 2019

Amid the rising nationalism and racial politics that culminated in World War II, European countries wishing to "purify" their nations often forced unwanted populations to migrate. The targeted minorities had few options, but as R. Chris Davis shows, they sometimes used creative tactics to fight back, redefining their identities to serve their own interests.

Davis's highly illuminating example is the case of the little-known Moldavian Csangos, a Hungarian- and Romanian-speaking community of Roman Catholics in eastern Romania. During World War II, some in the Romanian government wanted to expel them. The Hungarian government saw them as Hungarians and wanted to settle them on lands confiscated from other groups. Resisting deportation, the clergy of the Csangos enlisted Romania's leading racial anthropologist, collected blood samples, and rewrote a millennium of history to claim Romanian origins and national belonging—thus escaping the discrimination and violence that devastated so many of Europe's Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other minorities. In telling their story, Davis offers fresh insight to debates about ethnic allegiances, the roles of science and religion in shaping identity, and minority politics past and present.

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cover of Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765-1800: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism

Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765-1800

An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism

Éva H. Balázs

Central European University Press, 1997

One of the most distinguished historians of Central Europe examines a crucial period in the coexistence of the Austrian hereditary provinces and Hungary. In a Europe torn by wars and revolutions during the last third of the eighteenth century, political, economic, and personal factors intertwined to determine the fortunes of the Austrian rulers and the subjects of the Hungarian crown who collaborated with them. Contemporary as well as modern scholars have taken extreme positions on this period. Contributing to the often heated debates, Professor Balázs shows that it was a vigorous and constructive era in the monarchy. Rejecting the commonplaces of the center-periphery approach, she demonstrates that the Habsburg monarchy was a center whose reforms during this period inspired all subsequent reform movements in Central and Eastern Europe.
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cover of Hungary in the Cold War, 1945-1956: Between the United States and the Soviet Union

Hungary in the Cold War, 1945-1956

Between the United States and the Soviet Union

László Borhi

Central European University Press, 2004

Based on new archival evidence, examines Soviet Empire building in Hungary and the American response to it. Hungary was not important enough to resist the Soviets, its democratic opposition failed to win American sympathy, the US simply had no leverage over the Soviets, who sacrificed cooperation with the West for a closed sphere in Eastern Europe. The imposition of a Stalinist regime assured Hungary's unconditional loyalty to Soviet imperial needs. Unlike the GDR, Eastern Europe was never considered a bargaining chip for bettering relations with the West. The book analyzes why, given all its idealism and power, the US failed even in its minimal aims concerning the states of Eastern Europe. Eventually both powers pursued power politics: the Soviets in a naked form, the US subtly, but both with little regard for the fate of Hungarians.
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