Eastern Europe

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Equal parts testimony to the struggles of a bygone era and a love letter to a bright-eyed childhood that no outside force could dim, this is Dominika Dery's acclaimed memoir of Communist-era Czechoslovakia.... (read more)

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The most comprehensive survey of Polish history available in English, "God's Playground" demonstrates Poland's importance in European history from medieval times to the present.... (read more)

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Simons is a scholar-diplomat now serving as US coordinator for assistance to the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. He has updated this 1991 history and analysis, which is based on a course that he taught at Brown University... (read more)

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After the revolutions of 1989, Isabel Fonseca lived and traveled with the Gypsies of Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, Romainia, and Albania — listening to their stories and recording their attempts to become... (read more)

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From the assassination that set off World War I to the ethnic warfare sweeping Bosnia and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century--the place where terrorism and genocide were first practiced as tools of policy. This enthralling... (read more)

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The best known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right.... (read more)

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You can count on a Rick Steves guidebook to tell you what you really need to know when traveling in Istanbul. Rick Steves’ Istanbul is a “tour guide in your pocket” to one of the world’s grandest cities. Walking in the footsteps... (read more)

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From beloved international reporter Åsne Seierstad comes a remarkable exploration of the lives of ordinary Serbs under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic-during the dramatic events leading up to his fall, and finally in the troubled years that have... (read more)

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In this acclaimed international bestseller, Claudio Magris tracks the Danube River, setting his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, Christianity and Islam. In each town he raises the... (read more)

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Travelling by bus, on foot, by mule and horse, staying with Albanians in their houses and crumbling Stalinist tower blocks, Robert Carver meets Vlach shepherds and village intellectuals, ex-Communist Special Forces officers and juvenile heroin smugglers,... (read more)

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A powerful memoir of war, politics, literature, and family life by one of Europe's leading intellectuals. When George Konrád was a child of eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins managed to flee to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day... (read more)

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Presents a complete picture of this east European borderland, illuminating problems of identity politics and cultural change that Moldova has endured. Highlights political uses of culture, looking at ways in which language, history, and identity can... (read more)