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This original collection of essays offers an account of key moments and themes in the history of the Czech Lands from the ninth century to the fall of socialism in 1989. The essays, commissioned specially for this volume, are almost all written by prominent scholars teaching and researching in the present-day Czech Republic, and there is no comparable book in English on the subject. Topics range from the great Bohemian courts of the medieval and early modern periods, to the nationalist revival, and the dramatic ethnic upheavals of modern times. ... Read more

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Bohemia in History
I haven't finished the book yet, but perused all of it.I have Czech ancestry and been to the CZ Rep three times.This is the first book in English I've found on the history of Bohemia and more distinctly for the modern era, the Czech Republic.This book is a compilation of works by scholarly people on different eras dating from BC to principally 900 AD forward.There are maps to help also.This covers ALL the history and does not overemphasize the reformation, defenestrations, and Battle of White Mountain.I think it's well worth the money. ... Read more

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Located at the very center of Europe, Prague has been on the frontline of international political, intellectual, religious, and cultural conflicts for more than six centuries. Invaded and occupied by the Habsburgs, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Nazis, and then Communist Russia, the city s identity is shaped by a long experience of foreign domination and a strong sense of martyrdom.

A treasure house of Gothic, baroque, and modernist architecture, Prague is also a city of icons and symbols: statues, saints and signs reveal a turbulent history of religious and cultural conflict. As Kafka s nightmare city and home of the Good Soldier _vejk, the Czech capital also produced two of the twentieth century s emblematic writers. Richard Burton explores this metropolis of theatrical allusion, in which politics and drama have always been intertwined. His interpretation of the city s cultural past and present encompasses opera and rock music, puppetry and cinema, surrealism and socialist realism. Looking at Prague s world-famous landmarks and lesser-known sites, his reading of the city through its writing and iconography is both perceptive and challenging.

* THE CITY OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS: The Castle and Kafka, Ha_ek and Kundera; music from Smetana to the Plastic People of the Universe; modernism and cubism; political theater and the playwright-president Václav Havel.

* THE CITY OF TYRANNY AND RESISTANCE: Jan Hus and anti-Catholic revolt; subjugation and the rise of Czech nationalism; Germans, Czechs and Jews; "Prague Spring" 1968, Charter 77 and the "Velvet Revolution" of November 1989.

* THE CITY OF MAGIC, MURDER, AND MYTH: Medieval alchemy and astrology; the myth of the Golem, the ghetto and anti-Semitism; living puppets, robots, and a tradition of defenestration. ... Read more

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Excellent book for the first-time visitor or resident or anyone between.
Excellent, well-written book about one of the great cities of the world.Orderly, logical structure for the first-time visitor as well as for those who visit Prague often or live there.Not only a good writer but an accurate, non-revisionist historian.A pleasure to read and to share with others. ... Read more

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Text and illustrations present information on the geography, history and government, economy, people, cultural life and society of the nation known as the Czech Republic. ... Read more

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The first account of the secret police in Eastern Europe after 1989, this book uses a wide range of sources, including archives, to identify what has and has not changed since the end of Communism. After explaining the structure and workings of two of the area's most feared services, Czechoslovakia's StB and Romania's Securitate, the authors detail the creation of new security intelligence institutions, the development of contacts with the West, and forms of democratic control. ... Read more

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Chronicles the history of the Czech Republic and explores daily life, politics, and the many challenges facing the country since the decline of Communism and the emergence of democracy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Short, but very well made
This short book is an excellent introduction to the new Czech Republic. It begins with a quick look at the geography and climate of the country, and them moves into its history. After that, it does a wonderful job of explaining the Czech Republic, including (but not limited to) its religion, politics, economy, and even the problems facing it. All this is done in a mere 67 pages, but it nonetheless gives the reader a comprehensive understanding of the country.

I enjoyed the layout of this book; it includes many black-and-white pictures, many interesting sidebars, and even a chronology at the back. If you are interested in the Czech Republic, and want a short, concise introduction to the country, then I recommend that you read this book.

A concise, pleasingly illustrated general intro to the CZR
My wife and I recently participated in a cultural exchange between Britain and the Czech Republic (CZR). Our library yielded an armful of guide books and coffee-table picture books.

But for our purposes, Mr. Otfinoski's book took the prize. Though intended for younger readers, it offers engaging reading for anyone. The subject matter seems well researched, the writing is lucid, and each chapter includes a selection of bibliographic references. There are plenty of illustrations, mainly black and white but well chosen and relevant to the text they support. Most of all, the book gives a clear outline of the CZR's recent history and paints a believable picture of its current politics, business, culture, and everyday life.

Since the publisher's description hasn't been included in the Amazon listing, here is the table of contents:

1. An Introduction to the Land and Its People

2. From a Medieval Kingdom to a Modern Nation

3. Czechoslovakia under Two Brutal Masters (1918-1985)

4. The Velvet Revolution and the Velvet Divorce (1989-present)

5. Government

6. Religion

7. The Economy

8. Culture

9. Daily life

10. The Cities and Towns

11. Present Problems and Future Solutions

Back Matter: Chronology, Further Reading, and Index ... Read more

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Drawing on a rich trove of focus group data, interviews, and textual sources, Elaine Weiner's Market Dreams powerfully captures the varied responses of female managers and factory workers in the Czech Republic to their country's transition from socialism to capitalism. Her work, rooted in sociology and comparative feminism, is an important advance for the literature on women in Eastern Europe.

"Market Dreams is a conceptually-sophisticated and empirically-rich account of how the discourses and practices of the free market penetrated the hearts and minds of everyday Czech citizens. Weiner's provocative analysis takes readers inside the worlds of female factory workers to expose the discontinuities between their radiant market dreams and their everyday realities--and juxtaposes them to the continuities experienced by female managers. In the process, it challenges many of our ideas about post/socialism, marketization, and gender and reveals the enduring power of stories in shaping social identities and actions."
---Lynne Haney, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University

"Through interviews and a careful analysis of newspaper articles written in the first decade after the collapse of state socialism, Weiner explores the complicated interconnections between personal stories and the emerging neoliberal metanarrative of the free market in the Czech Republic after 1989. Her book transcends many of the dichotomies with which researchers of post-state socialism have been struggling: 'East' vs. 'West,' losers and winners, emancipation vs. oppression, etc., and thus makes a truly novel contribution to our understanding of women's lives after state socialism."
---Éva Fodor, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, Central European University

"Weiner's rich and innovative study of female Czech managers and workers exemplifies the importance of narrative analysis for understanding why gender and class have not (yet) reconfigured the sense of postcommunism's alternatives. This is critical reading for feminists, class analysts, and students of postcommunist social change."
---Michael Kennedy, Director, Center for European Studies, University of Michigan

Elaine Weiner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at McGill University. Visit the author's website at: www.mcgill.ca/sociology/faculty/weiner/.

Cover Credit: Frank Scherschel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

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In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars—Czech and American archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, geologists, and biologists—report on the results of the investigations from 1980 through the 1990s at Stránská skála, a complex of open-air loess sites on the outskirts of the Brno Basin in the Czech Republic.

The volume presents in-depth studies of the geology, paleopedology, frost processes, vegetation, fauna, and archaeological features of Stránská skála that break new ground in our understanding of early modern humans in central Europe.

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Czechoslovakia has captured the international imagination throughout the twentieth century. The Allied betrayal of the country to Nazi Germany in 1938 was to demonstrate the appalling consequences of naive appeasement of aggression. The wholesale reform of Soviet communism in the Prague Spring of 1968 won western support, and sympathy when it was crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks. The fierce Communist regime installed thereafter was brought down almost magically in 1989. Czechoslovakia added to international political vocabulary the term "Velvet Revolution", and the velvet metaphor has characterized much of the country's path-breaking postcommunist transformation and its peaceful break-up in 1993.
In separate chapters on history, politics, economics, foreign relations and the new Czech national identity, this book not only applauds the successes of the Czech Republic since 1993, but also uncovers the frayed edges of this velvet nation. ... Read more

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This volume employs a geographical perspective to investigate the nature of the transition from state socialism to capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and its implications for the quality of the environment. The text focuses on four areas of investigation: economic transition from centrally planned to a market economy in coal mining and the petrochemical industry; political transition from the one party system to a democratic society and its implications for the local government system; effects of economic and political transitions on the quality of the environment and local environmental management; and popular attitudes of most district citizens toward democratization, economic change and the environment. ... Read more

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The Czech Republic and Economic Transition in Eastern Europe is the first in-depth, comparative analysis of the Czech Republic's economic transition after the fall of the Communist bloc. Edited by Jan Svejnar,a principal architect of the Czech economic transformation and Economic Advisor to President Vaclav Havel, the book poses important questions about the Republic and its partners in Central and Eastern Europe. The thirty-five essayists describe the country's macroeconomic performance; its development of capital markets; the structure and performance of its industries; its unemployment, household behavior, and income distribution; and the environmental and health issues it faces.
In this in-depth, comparative analysis of the Czech Republic's economic transition, an international team of thirty-five economists examine the Republic and its partners in Central and Eastern Europe. Important questions and issues permeate the essays. For example, prior to 1939 the Czech Republic possessed the most advanced economy in the region; is it capable of reestablishing its dominance? Relative to its neighbors, the Republic ranks especially high on some transition-related performance indicators but low on others. What economic effects are related to the 1993 dissolution of the Czech and Slovak governments? And what can be learned by comparing the economic outcomes of two countries that shared legal and institutional frameworks? Data describe the country's macroeconomic performance; its development of capital markets; the structure and performance of its industries; its unemployment, household behavior, and income distribution; and the environmental and health issues facing it. Its most important contributions are its clarifications of the transition process.
The authors included in Transforming Czechoslovakia combine the best available data and techniques of economic analysis to assess the replacement of the inefficient but internally consistent central planning system with a more efficient market system. These authors, among whom are central European economic analysts, senior U.S. economists, and Czechoslovakian professors and economic researchers, discuss the country's macroeconomic performance; its development of capital markets; the structure and performance of its industries; its unemployment, household behavior, and income distribution; and the environmental and health issues facing it. The essays vary between presentations of history and policy and technical examinations of data. Together they offer the most comprehensive and detailed assessment of the country's economic transformation in print.
This book is important because its essayists compile results and reach conclusions that are broad and credible. The empirical data were gathered on the ground and have been subjected to advanced methodologies, including game theory, industrial organization, and Granger-Sims causality. ... Read more

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Straightforward histories of post-revolution States have all too often failed to provide sufficient context to rescue revolution, both as concept and practice, from the misplaced triumphalism of the contemporary world. In Negotiated Revolutions George Lawson marks a definitive departure in the study of radical political and socio-economic change, presenting a unique comparative analysis of three transformations from authoritarian rule to market democracy. Through the lens of international sociology the book critically considers the large scale processes of social and political revolution, bringing three apparently distinct transformations, from seemingly disparate authoritarian regimes and geographies, under a common rubric. With unique and novel conceptual analysis the book accurately locates both the potential and actuality of radical change in contemporary world affairs, processes usually mistakenly subsumed under the general framework of 'transitology'. ... Read more

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Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. These four Central European countries are the subject of this book, and the most likely to become admitted to the European Union within five to ten years. Author John Fitzmaurice sets the basic data for each country against the background of making the transition from communism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A dry summary of a fascinating region
I bought this book while researching Czech and Slovak politics, and got quite a bit less than I was expecting from it. Perhaps the title misled me: I was expecting an overview of politics in the region, but what I got instead was a handbook that, to a large extent, summarised the constitutions of the four countries.

What I found disappointing was the author's sometimes uncritical quotations from constitutions and party programmes. Rather than repeating what is supposed to be, he could have done a better job of informing the reader about what is by bringing in observations and opinions from other political scientists.

In certain areas, Fitzmaurice's urge to summarise leaves the book thin on the ground. For example, the author uses a single paragraph to describe "constitution building" in Slovakia.

The book also shows signs of a poor editing job. The author is quite patchy in his use of diacritics in Central European names; he uses them in some names, while ommitting them in others. He also manages to misspell the names of two leading Slovak politicians. Further, the book is not free of factual errors: Fitzmaurice writes about Poland's Marshal Pilsudski fighting "against the Soviet Union in 1920", when more careful research would have shown him that the USSR was, in fact, not founded until 1922, after Communist Russia's war with Poland was over. Such errors and ommissions reflect badly on the author's knowledge of the region.

Finally, given the title of the book, I expected more attention to be placed on regional issues and on relations between the four countries. While the author does maintain a comparative framework throughout the book, he devotes a handful of pages explicitly to relations between the four countries.

Thus, in short, while the book does provide useful background information on the four countries' politics, the reader would be well advised to look elsewhere for more in-depth information and analysis. ... Read more

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Chapters: Austrian Expatriates in the Czech Republic, Emil Artin, Josef Bican, Rudolf Vytlačil, Max Pallenberg. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 31. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt:Josef Bican Josef "Pepi" Bican (September 25, 1913 December 12, 2001) was a Czech -Austrian football forward . It is estimated by respected footballing statistics page RSSSF that Bican scored around 800 goals in all competitive matches, not including friendly games. This would make him the all-time most prolific scorer in football history known to date. He was a member of the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s and was the season's highest scorer in the whole of Europe on five separate occasions. Bican had the ability to play with both feet, he also had considerable pace and was able to run 100 metres in 10.8 seconds, which was as fast as many sprinters of the time. The IFFHS awarded Bican the "Golden Ball" as the greatest goalscorer of the last century.Early life Bican was born in Vienna to Ludmila and Franti ek Bican. Ludmila was Viennese Czech and Franti ek came from Sedlice in Southern Bohemia . Josef's father Franti ek was a footballer who played for Hertha Vienna. He went to fight in World War I and returned uninjured. However, Franti ek was to die at the age of just 30 in 1921 because he refused an operation to treat a kidney injury sustained in a football match. His mother worked in a restaurant kitchen. The family's poverty meant that Bican had to play football without any shoes, which helped him hone his ball control skills. Bican attended the Jan Amos Komenský school, a Czech school in Vienna. Four years after his father's death in 1925, twelve-year old Bican started to play for the Hertha Vienna junior team. When he was 18, Bican was spotted by Rapid Vienna , who were a big club in the city at the time.Club career When Bican fir... ... Read more

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This is a macroeconomic comparison amongst Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The German studies demonstrate a rapid transition to the market economy in East Gemany, with inflows of capital from West Germany; Hungary proves a case of lower adjustment; and the Czech Republic is somewhere in between. Topics covered include the labour market and the educational system in the Czech Republic; the food processing industry, the furnuiture industry and the textile and clothing industries in Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian educational system, the engineering industy, textile and clothing industry and furniture and shoe industries are also examined. Some comparisons are also drawn with Northern Ireland. ... Read more

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This book, based on extensive original research, examines the changes resulting from transformation at the local level in the former Czechoslovakia. ... Read more