ALONG UKRAINE’S
RIVER
A SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
HISTORY OF THE DNIPRO
Roman Adrian Cybriwsky
Temple University, Philadelphia
280 pages, 40 black-and-white illustrations, 10 maps
978-963-386-204-9 cloth
$60.00 / ¤53.00 / £46.00
The River Dnipro (formerly better known by the Russian name of Dnieper) is intimately
linked to the history and identity of Ukraine. Cybriwsky discusses the history of the river,
from when it was formed and its many uses and modifications by human agencies from
ancient times to the present.
From key vantage points along the river’s course—its source in western Russia, through
Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea—interesting stories shed light on past and present
life in Ukraine. Scenes set along the river from Russian and Ukrainian literature are evoked,
as well as musical compositions and works of art. Topics include the legacy of the region’s
cultural ancestors as the Kyivan Rus, the period of Cossack dominion, the epic battles for
the river’s bridges in World War II, the building of dams and huge reservoirs by the Soviet
Union, and the crisis of Chornobyl (Chernobyl). The author argues that the Dnipro and the
farmlands along it are Ukraine’s chief natural resources, and that the country’s future
depends on putting both to good use.
Written without academic pretence in an informal style with dashes of humor, Along Ukraine’s
River is illustrated with original line drawings, maps, and photographs.
FRONTIERS OF MEMORY
IN POST-SOVIET FICTION
OF KHARKIV, UKRAINE
A LABORATORY
OF TRANSNATIONAL
HISTORY
UKRAINE AND RECENT
UKRAINIAN
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Edited by
Tanya Zaharchenko
Georgiy Kasianov
Philipp Ther
222 pages 2016
978-963-386-119-6 cloth
$50.00 / ¤44.00 / £34.00
318 pages, 2009
978-963-9776-26-5 cloth
978-963-9776-43-2 paperback
$40.00 / ¤35.00 / £30.00
This study of cultural memory in post-Soviet society
shows how the inhabitants in Ukraine’s east negotiate
the historical legacy they have inherited. The scholarly journey explores the ways in which younger writers
in Kharkiv, a diverse, dynamic border city, comes to
grips with a traumatized cultural landscape.
Scholars in the field from Ukraine, Russia, USA,
Germany, Austria and Canada present an approach
to Ukrainian history which goes beyond the standard
‘national narrative’ schemes, predominant in the majority of post-Soviet countries after 1991, in the years
of implementing ‘nation-building projects’.
2017 FALL & WINTER
related titles
WHERE CURRENTS
MEET
1
new books
DYNAMICS OF CLASS
AND STRATIFICATION
IN POLAND
Irina Tomescu-Dubrow
Kazimierz M. Słomczyński
Henryk Domański
Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow
Zbigniew Sawiński
Dariusz Przybysz
Polish Academy of Sciences
280 pages
978-963-386-155-4 cloth
$70.00 / ¤ 62.00 / £54.00
This book is about long-term changes to class and inequality in Poland. Drawing upon
major social surveys, the team of authors from the Polish Academy of Sciences offer the
rare comprehensive study of important changes to the social structure from the communist
era to the present.
The core argument is that, even during extreme societal transformations, key features
of social life have long-lasting, stratifying effects. The authors analyse the core issues
of inequality research that best explain “who gets what and why:” social mobility, status
attainment and their mechanisms, with a focus on education, occupation, and income.
The transition from communist political economy to liberal democracy and market
capitalism offers a unique opportunity for scholars to understand how people move
from one stratification regime to the next.
There are valuable lessons to be learned from linking past to present. Classic issues of class,
stratification, mobility, and attainment have endured decades of radical social change.
These concepts remain valid even when society tries to eradicate them.
related titles
FROM SOLIDARITY
TO MARTIAL LAW
SHORTCUT OR
PIECEMEAL
THE POLISH CRISIS OF
1980–1981
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND
STRUCTURAL CHANGE
Edited by
Andrzej Paczkowski
Malcolm Byrne
Foreword by
Lech Walesa
596 pages, 2007 ISSN 1587-2416
National Security Archive Cold War Readers
978-963-7326-96-7 cloth
$65.00 / ¤49.95 / £43.95
978-963-7326-84-4 paperback
$40.00 / ¤35.00 / £30.00
95 documents, transcripts of Soviet and Polish
Politburo meetings, on the 16 months between
August 1980 when the Solidarity trade union was
founded and December 1981 when Polish authorities declared martial law and crushed the nationwide
opposition movement.
2
Jan Winiecki
224 pages, 2015
978-963-386-063-2 cloth
$60.00 / ¤52.00 / £40.00
This book offers a theoretical background to the shift
from industry to human capital intensive services
as the engine of economic growth. The author also
provides an assessment of the alternative economic
development strategies in Brazil, Russia, India, and
China.
2017 FALL & WINTER
CIVIC AND UNCIVIC
VALUES IN POLAND
VALUE TRANSFORMATION,
EDUCATION, AND CULTURE
Edited by
Sabrina P. Ramet
NTNU
Kristen Ringdal
NTNU
Katarzyna Dośpiał-Borysiak
University of Łódż
320 pages, cloth
978-963-386-220-9
$60.00 / ¤ 53.00 / £46.00
Poland, like many societies across the world, is becoming more polarized in diverse areas
of life, as contending forces seek to advance incompatible agendas. The polarization over
values in Polish politics was evident already before communism collapsed but became more
obvious in the following years and reached a crescendo after the October 2015 parliamentary elections, which brought a right-wing party into power.
This volume focuses on the years since 1989, looking at the clash between civic values
(the rule of law, individual rights, tolerance, respect for the harm principle, equality, and
neutrality of the state in matters of religion) and uncivic values (the rule of a dictator or
dictatorial party, contempt for individual rights, bigotry, disrespect for the harm principle,
unequal treatment of people whether through discrimination or through exploitation, and
state favoritism of one religion over others). The authors address voting behavior, political
parties, anti-Semitism, homophobia, the role of the Catholic Church, and reflections in
history textbooks, film, and even rock music. This volume makes clear that for the foreseeable future the conflict in Poland between traditional, conservative values and liberal, civic
values is likely to continue, provoking tensions and protests.
CIVIC AND UNCIVIC
VALUES
HISTORY, POLITICS,
AND VALUE
TRANSFORMATION
SERBIA IN THE POSTMILOŠEVIĆ ERA
Edited by
Edited by
Sabrina P. Ramet
Albert Simkus
Ola Listhaug
Ola Listhaug
Sabrina P. Ramet
Dragana Dulić
290 pages, 2014
978-963-386-041-0 cloth
$60.00 / ¤45.00 / £38.00
440 pages, 2011
978-963-9776-98-2 cloth
$55.00 / ¤42.00 / £35.00
Studies on the problems that arise about the completion of three key tasks in Kosovo: establishing the
principle of the separation of powers (including the
independence of the judiciary), the implementation of
the rule of law, and especially, and respect for civic
values.
This book discusses Serbia’s struggle for democratic
values after the fall of the Milosevic regime, and after
the trauma caused by the secession of Kosovo. A broad
range of topics were examined in order to judge the
prospects of two alternative value systems in Serbia:
liberal, cosmopolitan and civic on the one hand, and
traditional, provincial, nationalist on the other.
2017 FALL & WINTER
related titles
CIVIC AND UNCIVIC
VALUES IN KOSOVO
3
new books
COCA-COLA SOCIALISM
AMERICANIZATION OF YUGOSLAV
CULTURE IN THE SIXTIES
Radina Vučetić
University of Belgrade
310 pages, and 15 pages photo gallery
978-963-386-200-1 cloth
$65.00 / ¤58.00 / £50.00
This book is about the Americanization of Yugoslav culture and everyday life during the
nineteen-sixties. After falling out with the Eastern bloc, Tito turned to the United States
for support and inspiration. In the political sphere the distance between the two countries was carefully maintained, yet in the realms of culture and consumption the Yugoslav
regime was definitely much more receptive to the American model. For Titoist Yugoslavia this
tactic turned out to be beneficial, stabilizing the regime internally and providing an image
of openness in foreign policy.
Coca-Cola Socialism addresses the link between cultural diplomacy, culture, consumer
society and politics. Its main argument is that both culture and everyday life modeled on
the American way were a major source of legitimacy for the Yugoslav Communist Party,
and a powerful weapon for both USA and Yugoslavia in the Cold War battle for hearts and
minds. Radina Vučetić explores how the Party used American culture in order to promote
its own values and what life in this socialist and capitalist hybrid system looked like for
ordinary people who lived in a country with communist ideology in a capitalist wrapping.
Her book offers a careful reevaluation of the limits of appropriating the American dream
and questions both an uncritical celebration of Yugoslavia’s openness and an exaggerated
depiction of its authoritarianism.
related titles
4
FARE WELL, ILLYRIA
YUGOSLAVIA’S
SUNNY SIDE
A HISTORY OF TOURISM IN
SOCIALISM (1950S–1980S)
Edited by
David Binder
Hannes Grandits
Karin Taylor
218 pages, 2014
978-963-386-009-0 paperback
$24.95 / ¤19.00 / £16.00
436 pages, 2010
978-963-9776-69-2 cloth
$55.00 / ¤ 42.00 / £35.00
As a reporter for the New York Times, the author
interviewed many of the leading political figures of
the Balkans (Illyria). Binder devotes a chapter to each
ethnic group from Vlachs to Serbs, talks about their
differences and commonalities, and manages to do so
without offense.
Twelve papers explore the history of tourism in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on the role of ideology in formulating tourism policy, the relation of tourism to the
Yugoslav population’s perceptions of rising standards
of living and the idea of Yugoslavia as a “third way”
for socialism.
2017 FALL & WINTER
FROM CENTRAL
PLANNING
TO THE MARKET
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
CZECH ECONOMY 1989–2004
Libor Žídek
Masaryk University, Czech Republic
520 pages
978-963-386-000-7 cloth
$75.00 / ¤67.00 / £58.00
This book describes the process of the Czech economic transformation from the beginning
of the 1990s to the country’s entry into the European Union in 2004. This transformation
is divided into four periods: an initial recession caused by the transformation; economic
growth in the mid-1990s; a recession connected to the currency crisis of 1997; and recovery
and growth from 1999 until 2004, when the analysis ends. The examination covers the main
aspects of the transformation—an overall view of the process, political transition, economic
policy, economic results (GDP development, inflation, unemployment), changes in outside
indicators (balance of payments), privatization, transformation of the financial sector, and
changes in the business sector and institutional development.
The book also compares Czech development in this transformative era to those of Poland
and Hungary. As in Hungary and Poland, the Czech Republic underwent an exceptional
qualitative shift from a system centrally planned to one that was market-based. The book
concludes that despite mistakes and hardships, the overall transformation process in Central
Europe has been successful.
ACCIDENTAL
OCCIDENTAL
TWENTY YEARS OF
INDEPENDENCE
ECONOMICS AND
CULTURE OF TRANSITION
IN MITTELEUROPA,
THE BALTIC AND THE
BALKAN AREA
Compiled and edited by
M. Mark Stolarik
Lajos Bokros
370 pages, 2016
978-963-386-153-0 cloth
$60.00 / ¤ 52.00 / £40.00
204 pages, 2013
978-615-5225-24-6 cloth
$55.00 / ¤ 42.00 / £35.00
Synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North
American scholars compare the Czech Republic and
Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and
discuss the political, economic and social developments in the new countries.
Bokros has been a frontline actor of post-communist
economic transition. By highlighting the painful process of transition and analyzing its economics and
culture, he contributes to the theoretical (academic)
and practical (political) defense of Western civilization, market capitalism and liberal democracy.
2017 FALL & WINTER
related titles
THE CZECH AND
SLOVAK REPUBLICS
5
new books
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
AND INTERWAR
REALITIES
HUNGARIAN CULTURAL
DIPLOMACY, 1918 –1941
Zsolt Nagy
University of St. Thomas, Minnesota
354 pages incl. 8 pages color gallery
978-963-386-194-3 cloth
$65.00 / ¤58.00 / £50.00
After the shock of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which Hungarians perceived as an
unfair dictate, the leaders of the country found it imperative to change Hungary’s
international image in a way that would help the revision of the post-World War I settlement. The monograph examines the development of interwar Hungarian cultural diplomacy in three areas: universities, the tourist industry, and the media—primarily
motion pictures and radio production. It is a story of the Hungarian elites’ high hopes
and deep-seated anxieties about the country’s place in a Europe newly reconstructed after World War I, and how these elites perceived and misperceived themselves, their
surroundings, and their own ability to affect the country’s fate. The defeat in the Great War
was crushing, but it was also stimulating, as Nagy documents in his examination of foreignlanguage journals, tourism, radio, and other tools of cultural diplomacy. The mobilization
of diverse cultural and intellectual resources, the author argues, helped establish Hungary’s
legitimacy in the international arena, contributed to the modernization of the country, and
established a set of enduring national images.
Though the study is rooted in Hungary, it explores the dynamic and contingent relationship between identity construction and transnational cultural and political currents in EastCentral European nations in the interwar period.
related titles
THE LIFE OF JÓZSEF
POGÁNY / JOHN PEPPER
Edited by
Csaba Békés
János Rainer
Malcolm Byrne
Thomas Sakmyster
652 pages, 2002
National Security Archive Cold War Reader
ISSN 1587-2416
978-963-9241-66-4 paperback
$40.00 / ¤35.00 / £30.00
This volume presents the story of the Hungarian
Revolution in 120 original documents from archives
that were inaccessible until the 1990s, ranging from
the minutes of Khrushchev’s first meeting with Hungarian leaders after Stalin’s death in 1953, to Yeltsin’s
declaration on Hungary in 1992.
6
A COMMUNIST
ODYSSEY
THE 1956
HUNGARIAN
REVOLUTION
230 pages, 2012
978-615-5225-08-6 cloth
$55.00 / ¤50.00 / £45.00
A victim of Stalin’s purges, József Pogány played a
major role in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919,
in the “March Action” in Germany in 1921, and, as a
cadre of Moscow-based Comintern, under the name
of John Pepper, in the development of the American
Communist Party of the 1920s.
2017 FALL & WINTER
NATIONALISM AND
TERROR
ANTE PAVELIĆ AND USTASHA
TERRORISM FROM FASCISM TO
THE COLD WAR
Pino Adriano
Radio Televisione Italiana
Giorgio Cingolani
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona
390 pages
978-963-386-206-3 cloth
$70.00 / ¤62.00 / £54.00
This book covers the full story of the Ustasha, a fascist movement in Croatia, from its
historic roots to its downfall. The authors address key questions: In what international
context did Ustasha terrorism grow and develop? How did this movement rise to power, and
then exterminate hundreds of thousands of innocents? Who was Ante Pavelić, its leader?
Was he a shrewd politician, able to exploit for his independent project Mussolini’s imperial
ambitions, Hitler’s pan-German aims, and the anti-Bolshevism of the Holy See and the
Western bloc? Or was he, consciously or not, a pawn in other hands, in a complex international scenario where Croatia was only arena among many? And after the movement’s
collapse, how were several of the most prominent Ustasha leaders able to evade capture
by Tito’s victorious army? The facts and documents confront us with the ambivalence
of terrorism.
The book places the appearance of the Ustasha movement not only in the context of the
interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia but also in the wider perspective of the emergence of
European fascism.
RADICAL REVISIONS
OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
IDEOLOGIES
AND NATIONAL
IDENTITIES
THE CASE OF
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
Edited by
Diana Mishkova
Marius Turda
Balázs Trencsényi
452 pages, 2015
978-963-7326-62-2 cloth
$60.00 / ¤ 45.00 / £38.00
The last volume of the Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe presents 46 texts
excerpted from a selection of essays, literary works,
political treatises, etc. on the anti-modernist political discourse – not to be confused with right-wing
radicalism – from the 1880s to the 1940s.
2017 FALL & WINTER
Edited by
John Lampe
Mark Mazower
260 pages, 2003
978-963-9241-72-5 cloth
$49.95 / ¤ 42.95 / £32.95
978-963-9241-82-4 paperback
$25.95 / ¤ 23.95 / £18.99
related titles
ANTI-MODERNISM
These studies by a cohort of young scholars in
history, anthropology, political science, and comparative literature, guided by renowned editors,
invite attention to fascism, socialism, and liberalism,
nationalism and communism, and focus on the
their remembrance in shaping today’s ideology and
national identity.
7
new books
THE INVISIBLE SHINING
THE CULT OF MÁTYÁS RÁKOSI IN
STALINIST HUNGARY, 1945—1956
Balázs Apor
Trinity College, Dublin
280 pages
978-963-386-192-9 cloth
$65.00 / ¤58.00 / £50.00
This book offers a detailed analysis of the construction, reception and eventual decline of the
cult of the Hungarian Communist Party Secretary, Mátyás Rákosi, one of the most striking
examples of orchestrated adulation in the Soviet bloc. While his cult never approached the
magnitude of that of Stalin, Rákosi’s ambition to outshine the other “best disciples” and become the best of the best was manifest in his diligence in promoting a Soviet-type following
in Hungary. The main argument of Balázs Apor is that the cult of personality is not just a
curious aspect of communist dictatorship, it is an essential element of it.
The monograph is primarily concerned with techniques and methods of cult construction,
as well as the role various institutions played in the creation of mythical representations
of political figures. Separate chapters present visual and non-visual methods of cult construction. The author engages with a wider international literature on Stalinist cults in an
impressive manner. Apor uses the case of Rákosi to explore how personality cults are created,
how such cults are perceived, and how they are eventually unmade. The book addresses the
success—generally questionable—of such projects, as well as their uncomfortable legacies.
related titles
8
STIGMATIZED
A HISTORY OF THE
INTERNAL DEPORTATIONS
IN HUNGARY: 1951-1958
POLITICAL JUSTICE
IN BUDAPEST AFTER
WORLD WAR II
Ildikó Barna
Kinga Széchenyi
730 pages, 2016
978-0-9859433-7-0 cloth
$55.00 / ¤ 42.00 / £35.00
Andrea Pető
Published by Helena History Press, distributed by CEU Press
160 pages incl. 30 figures, 2014
978-963-386-052-6 cloth
$60.00 / ¤ 45.00 / £38.00
This book is a detailed history of the internal deportation campaign instituted by the Hungarian communist
government in 1950s. It recounts the legal basis of
the deportations, the manner in which Hungarian laws
were distorted to serve the purpose of sending its own
citizens into forced internal exile.
This book analyses this process whereby so called
people’s courts tried those who had participated in
the wartime atrocities in Hungary, which fell under
Soviet influence at the end of WWII, when fighting
was still underway in the western part of the country,
well before the Nuremberg trials.
2017 FALL & WINTER
NARRATIVES OF EXILE
AND IDENTITY
SOVIET DEPORTATION MEMOIRS
FROM THE BALTIC STATES
Edited by
Tomas Balkelis
University College Dublin
Violeta Davoliūtė
Institute of Lithuanian Literature, Vilnius
230 pages
978-963-386-183-7 cloth
$60.00 / ¤53.00 / £46.00
This collection of essays considers the Soviet-era gulag in the Baltic States within the broader
international research on displacement and cultural memory. Scholars from the Baltic States,
Western Europe, Canada, and the United States explore the following questions: Do different
groups of deportees experience deportation differently? How do the accounts of women,
children and men differ? Do various ethnic groups remember the past differently? How do
they use historical and cultural paradigms to structure their experience in unique ways? To
answer these questions the authors researched archives, read testimonies (with an emphasis
on testimonies by women and children), interviewed former deportees, and examined cultural
artifacts produced since the late 1980s, applying cross-disciplinary approaches used in the
study of Holocaust testimonies.
The essays in the book also examine the issues of cultural transmission and commemoration,
as well as public manifestations of the after-effects of deportations in contemporary social,
cultural and political contexts of Baltic societies, including reflections of the Gulag in literature, the cinema and museums.
ANTI-KULAK CAMPAIGN
IN ESTONIA
Edited by
T
Tiina Kirss
Compiled by
C
Rutt Hinrikus
Anu Mai Kõll
296 pages, cloth, 2013
978-615-5225-14-7 paperback
$55.00 / ¤42.00 / £35.00
522 pages, 2009
978-963-9776-39-5 cloth
$60.00 / ¤ 49.95 / £45.00
Before collectivization of agriculture in Estonia,
“kulaks” (better-off farmers) were persecuted and
many of them were deported in 1949. This book is
focused on these processes from the perspective of
the rural population. Kõll portrays the peaceful resistance as the kulak identifications were challenged.
She describes “how” this process worked, whereas the
question ”why” finds responses in the actors’ life.
An anthology of life stories of Estonians describing the
travails of ordinary people under numerous regimes from
a perspective where time is placed in the context of lifespans, and subjects grounded in personal experience.
Most of the life stories demonstrate sufferings under
foreign (Russian) oppression.
2017 FALL & WINTER
related titles
E
ESTONIAN
LIFE
STORIES
S
THE VILLAGE AND
THE CLASS WAR
9
new books
FROM THE MIDWIFE’S BAG
TO THE PATIENT’S FILE
PUBLIC HEALTH IN EASTERN
EUROPE
Edited by
Heike Karge
Regensburg University, Germany
Friederike Kind-Kovács
Regensburg University, Germany
Sara Bernasconi
Zürich University, Switzerland
370 pages, 20 photos
978-963-386-208-7 cloth
$70.00 / ¤62.00 / £54.00
This volume offers an analysis of the intertwined relationship between public health and the
biopolitical dimensions of state- and nation building in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern
Europe. It challenges the idea of diverging paths towards modernity of Europe’s western and
eastern countries by not only identifying ideas, discourses and practices of “solving” public
health issues that were shared among political regimes in the region; it also uncovers the
ways in which, since the late nineteenth century, the biopolitical organization of the state
both originated from and shaped an emerging common European framework.
The broad range of local case studies stretches from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Greece, and Hungary, to Poland, Serbia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.
Taking a time span that begins in the late nineteenth century and ends in the post-socialist era, the book makes an original contribution to scholarship examining the relationship
between public health, medicine, and state- and nation building in Europe’s long twentieth century. Close readings and dense descriptions of local discourses and practices of
“public” health help to reflect on the transnational and global entanglements in the sphere
of public health. In doing so, this volume facilitates comparisons on the regional, European,
and global level.
related titles
10
LANDSCAPES
OF DISEASE
HEALTH, HYGIENE
AND EUGENICS IN
SOUTH-EASTERN
EUROPE TO 1945
MALARIA IN MODERN
GREECE
Edited by
Christian Promitzer
Sevasti Trubeta
Marius Turda
Katerina Gardikas
CEU Press Studies In the History of Medicine
220 pages, 2017
ISSN 2079-1119
978-615-5211-98-0 cloth
$60.00 / ¤57.00 / £48.00
Malaria has existed in Greece since prehistoric times.
Its prevalence fluctuated depending on climatic, socioeconomic and political changes. The book focuses
on the factors that contributed to the spreading of the
disease in the years between independent statehood
in 1830 and the elimination of malaria in the 1970s.
490 pages, cloth, 2011
ISBN 978-963-9776-82-1
$50.00 / ¤37.00 / £33.00
This book deals with issues of health, hygiene and
eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945, specifically, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece
and Romania. Its major concern is to examine the
transfer of medical ideas to society via local, national and international agencies and to show in how far
developments in public health, preventive medicine,
social hygiene, welfare, gender relations and eugenics
followed a regional pattern.
2017 FALL & WINTER
TYRANTS WRITING
POETRY
THE ART OF LANGUAGE AND
VIOLENCE
Edited by
Konstantin Kaminskij
University of Konstanz, Germany
Albrecht Koschorke
University of Konstanz, Germany
294 pages
978-963-386-202-5 paperback
$30.00 / ¤ 25.95 / £22.99
As conventional understanding would have it, the sometimes brutal business of governing
can only be carried out at the price of distance from art, while poetic beauty best flourishes
at a distance from actions executed at the pole of power. Dramatically contradicting this
idea is the fact that violent rulers are often the greatest friends of art, and indeed draw
attention to themselves as artists.
Why do tyrants of all people often have a particularly poetic vein? Where do terror and
fiction meet? The cultural history of totalitarian regimes is unwrapped in ten case studies,
in a comparative perspective. The book focuses on the phenomenon that many of the great
despots in history were themselves writers. By studying the artistic ambitions of Nero,
Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Saparmurat
Nyyazow and Radovan Karadzic, the studies explore the complicated relationship
between poetry and political violence, and open our eyes for the aesthetic dimensions
of total power.
The essays make an important contribution to a number of fields: the study of totalitarian
regimes, cultural studies, biographies of 20th century leaders. They underscore the
frequent correlation between tyrannical governance and an excessive passion for language,
and prove that the merging of artistic and political charisma tends to justify the claim to
absolute power.
WE ARE ALWAYS INTERESTED...
… to receive proposals for new books. Please write or send an e-mail to us and
ask for a manuscript information sheet. It is also available on our website where
you can read further information about the procedure:
http://www.ceupress.com/submission.html
Please send all postal submission to:
CEU Press, H-1051 Budapest, Nádor utca 11, Hungary,
Or by email to [email protected]
2017 FALL & WINTER
11
SYNAGOGUES IN HUNGARY,
1782-1918
Rudolf Klein
Szent István University, Hungary
Published by Terc Press, Hungary
800 Pages, 24 x 30 cm (9.45” x 11.8”)
978-615-544-508-8 cloth
$120.00 / ¤106.00 / £92.00
This is the first comprehensive study that systematically covers all synagogues in Hungary from the Edict
of Tolerance by Joseph II to the end of World War I. Unlike prior attempts, dealing with post-World-War-II
Hungary only, the geographical range of this study includes historic Hungary, today Austro-Hungarian
successor states, within the mentioned chronological timespan.
The study presents the architecture of Hungarian synagogues in a chronological order; the author gives
special attention to the boom of synagogue architecture and art from 1867 to 1918, a time also called
“the modern Jewish Renaissance”. However, the greatest contribution of this book is the innovative matrix
method, which the author applies to determine the basic types of synagogues by using eight basic criteria.
The book also deals with the problem of urban context, the position of the synagogue in the city and
its immediate environment. There are two detailed case studies how communities built their synagogues
and how these were received by the general public. A theoretical summary tries to determine the role of
post-emancipation period synagogues in general architectural history.
EMINENT HUNGARIANS
Krisztián Nyáry
Líra Publishing Group, Hungary
Published by Corvina Books Ltd.
356 pages
978-963-136-410-1 paperback
$30.00 / ¤25.95 / £22.99
This book praises Hungarian heroes of earlier generations in the hope that it contributes to the raising of
new cohorts of ordinary citizens who will perform extraordinary deeds of daily heroism, of compassion and
caring for others, of standing up and speaking out against injustice, and taking wise and effective action
in support of humanity—in all its forms.
The eleven heroes in this engaging book come from many backgrounds. Some of them have acquired fame
across the world like György Cziffra, the pianist, or László Papp, three times Olympic champion in boxing,
and Ignác Semmelweis, a 19th century pioneer in antiseptic procedures in medicine. And there are a few
who are little known even among their compatriots and have gained their deserved notoriety thanks to
the highly popular Hungarian original of Nyáry’s book. The personalities include an oil explorer, a writer, a
physician, a translator, a horse-breeder, a swimmer, a colonel, and a bishop.
One thing is common about all the eleven individuals: they should serve as inspiring role-models for
everyone, young and old, men and women alike.
12
2017 FALL & WINTER