History/Area Studies

Now reissued in a second, updated edition, this book provides a concise, illustrated introduction to the history of modern Greece, from the first stirrings of the national movement in the late eighteenth century to the present day. It is designed to provide a basic introduction for general and academic readers with little or no prior knowledge of the subject, and supersedes Professor Clogg's A Short History of Modern Greece which became a classic following its initial publication in 1979. This wholly new book, first published in 1992, was conceived afresh for a broad readership.

This classic book offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of Slovakia, from its establishment on the Danubian Plain to the present. While paying tribute to Slovakia's resilience and struggle for survival, it describes contributions to European civilization in the Middle Ages; the development of Slovak consciousness in response to Magyarization; its struggle for autonomy in Czechoslovakia after the Treaty of Versailles; its resistance, as the first Slovak Republic, to a Nazi-controlled Europe; its reaction to Communism; and the path that led to the creation of the second Slovak Republic. Now fully updated to the present day, the book examines the vagaries of Slovak post-Communist politics that led to Slovakia's membership in NATO and the European Union.

In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline--a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe, Czechs are usually encountered only in the margins of other people's stories. In The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. He presents a comprehensive and long-needed history of the Czech people that is also a remarkably original history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy center.

Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a proudly Slavic national state; the most easterly democracy in Europe; and a westerly outlier of the Soviet bloc. The complexities of its location have given rise to profound (and often profoundly comic) reflections on the modern condition. Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek and Milan Kundera are all products of its spirit of place. Sayer describes how Bohemia's ambiguities and contradictions are those of Europe itself, and he considers the ironies of viewing Europe, the West, and modernity from the vantage point of a country that has been too often ignored.

The Coasts of Bohemia draws on an enormous array of literary, musical, visual, and documentary sources ranging from banknotes to statues, museum displays to school textbooks, funeral orations to operatic stage-sets, murals in subway stations to censors' indexes of banned books. It brings us into intimate contact with the ever changing details of daily life--the street names and facades of buildings, the heroes figured on postage stamps--that have created and recreated a sense of what it is to be Czech. Sayer's sustained concern with questions of identity, memory, and power place the book at the heart of contemporary intellectual debate. It is an extraordinary story, beautifully told.

The Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word—a vast mix of far-flung regions and accidental citizens by way of conquest or annexation. Typical of such empires, it was built on shaky foundations. That instability made its demise inevitable, asserts Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of Russia and architect of the "shock therapy" economic reforms of the 1990s. Yet a growing desire to return to the glory days of empire is pushing today's Russia backward into many of the same traps that made the Soviet Union untenable. In this important new book, Gaidar clearly illustrates why Russian nostalgia for empire is dangerous and ill-fated: "Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat." Gaidar uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against this tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market. The Soviets had used revenues from energy sales to prop up struggling sectors such as agriculture, which was so thoroughly ravaged by hyperindustrialization that the Soviet Union became a net importer of food. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that revenue stream diminished, and dependent sectors suffered heavily. Although strategies requiring austerity or sacrifice can be politically difficult, Russia needs to prepare for such downturns and restrain spending during prosperous times. Collapse of an Empire shows why it is imperative to fix the roof before it starts to rain, and why sometimes the past should be left in the past.

In Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a gripping account of modern Russia. President Dmitri Medvedev and the country’s real power, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, are posing a resolute challenge to the West. In a penetrating narrative that recounts the lives and deaths of six Russians, LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered. Interviews with eyewitnesses and the families and friends of these victims reveal how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence and the emotional toll that this lethal maze is exacting on ordinary people. The result is a fresh way of assessing the forces that are driving this major new confrontation with the West.

Remote, forbidding, and volatile, the Caspian Sea long tantalized the world with its vast oil reserves. But outsiders, blocked by the closed Soviet system, couldn’t get to it. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and a wholesale rush into the region erupted. Along with oilmen, representatives of the world’s leading nations flocked to the Caspian for a share of the thirty billion barrels of proven oil reserves at stake, and a tense geopolitical struggle began. The main players were Moscow and Washington–the former seeking to retain control of its satellite states, and the latter intent on dislodging Russia to the benefit of the West.

The Oil and the Glory is the gripping account of this latest phase in the epochal struggle for control of the earth’s “black gold.” Steve LeVine, who was based in the region for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Newsweek, weaves an astonishing tale of high-stakes political gamesmanship, greed, and scandal, set in one of the most opaque corners of the world. In LeVine’s telling, the world’s energy giants jockey for position in the rich Kazakh and Azeri oilfields, while superpowers seek to gain a strategic foothold in the region and to keep each other in check. At the heart of the story is the contest to build and operate energy pipelines out of the landlocked region, the key to controlling the Caspian and its oil. The oil pipeline that resulted, the longest in the world, is among Washington’s greatest foreign policy triumphs in at least a decade and a half.

Along the way, LeVine introduces such players as James Giffen, an American moneyman who was also the political “fixer” for oil companies eager to do business on the Caspian and the broker for Kazakhstan’s president and ministers; John Deuss, the flamboyant Dutch oil trader who won big but lost even bigger; Heydar Aliyev, the oft-misunderstood Azeri president who transcended his past as a Soviet Politburo member and masterminded a scheme to loosen Russian control over its former colonies in the Caspian region; and all manner of rogues, adventurers, and others drawn by the irresistible pull of untold riches and the possible “final frontier” of the fossil-fuel era. The broader story is of the geopolitical questions of the Caspian oil bonanza, such as whether Russia can be a trusted ally and trading partner with the West, and what Washington’s entry into this important but chaotic region will mean for its long-term stability.

The book illustrates the development and interaction of church and secular art between 1721 and 1917, it explores the main churches, revered icons, local saints, and holy places of St. Petersburg.

A book by academic and former head of the Office of the President of Azerbaijan. English version of the text: Azərbaycan – 2003-2008: Zaman Haqqında Düşünərkən.

Performative Democracy explores a potential in political life that easily escapes theorists: the indigenously inspired enacting of democracy by citizens. Written by one who experienced an emerging public sphere within Communist Poland, the book seeks to identify the conditions for performativity-performing politics--in public life. It examines a broad spectrum of cultural, social, and political initiatives that facilitated the non-violent transformation of an autocratic environment into a democratic one. Examples of performativity range from experimental student theater, through the engaged political thinking of dissident Adam Michnik, the alternative culture, and the Solidarity movement, to the drama of the Round Table Talks (and their striking parallels in South Africa), and finally, the post-1989 efforts of feminist groups and women artists to defend the recently won right of free public discourse. The book argues that performative democracy, with its improvisational mode and imaginative solutions, deserves a legitimate place in our broader reflections on democracy. Matynia describes how two apparent miracles of recent history-that communism in Poland was brought down without violence and that apartheid in South Africa was ended without a bloodbath-were the results of hard work and a new approach to change that she calls "performative democracy." Matynia reveals amazing parallels between the drama of Poland's Round Table Talks in 1989 and the Truth Commissions in South Africa in 1994. Matynia describes how experimental student theater groups, though subsidized by a totalitarian regime afraid of any authentic public life, created little pockets of public space for free and meaningful expression that were augmented by uncensored underground publishing and further expanded by the Solidarity movement into a democratic society within the totalitarian state. Matynia describes in a personal way how in the 1970s student theater groups planted the seeds of an authentic public sphere, how underground publishers nurtured freedom of expression and social criticism, and how, after democratic elections, women artists in the 1990s fought to sustain the newly won right to free public discourse. Matynia traces in vivid human terms the democratic aspirations and practices that led to democratic change in Poland but went largely unnoticed by western media and policymakers.

"The CultureShock!" series is a dynamic and indispensable range of guides for those travellers who are looking to truly understand the countries they are visiting. Each title explains the customs, traditions, social and business etiquette in a lively and informative style. "CultureShock!" authors, all of whom have experienced the joys and pitfalls of cultural adaptation, are ideally placed to provide warm and informative advice to those who seek to integrate seamlessly into diverse cultures. The books in this series have a friendly and honest writing style and are full of personal experiences, practical advice and useful information. Each "CultureShock!" book contains: insights into the people and their culture and traditions; advice on adapting into the local environment; linguistic help and hints on how to learn the language and do business; a useful list of foreign words and phrases and a comprehensive resource guide; how to get the most out of your travel experience; About "CultureShock!" ; Table of Contents; Introduction/Preface/Acknowledgements/Dedication; and, Map - First Impressions, Overview of Land and History, People, Fitting into Society/Socialising with the Locals, Settling In, Food and Entertainment, Enjoying the Culture/Travel, Learning the Language, Doing Business, and Fast Facts. This book also contains: Culture Quiz; Do's and Don'ts; Glossary; Resource Guide; Further Reading; About the Author; Expatriate workers settling into a new assignment in a foreign land. They could be single or married with and without families; Visitors planning a long-term stay in a foreign country for other reasons other than work e.g. students, short-term overseas attachment, volunteer workers etc.; Tourists who are more interested in getting to know the culture and people of a country than the usual tourist spots; and, Inquisitive armchair travellers.