The Middle Kingdoms
A New History of Central Europe
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
An essential new history of Central Europe, the contested lands so often at the heart of world history
Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture. Central Europeans launched the Reformation and Romanticism, developed the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and advanced some of the twentieth century’s most important artistic movements.
Drawing on a lifetime of research and scholarship, The Middle Kingdoms tells as never before the captivating story of two thousand years of Central Europe’s history and its enduring significance in world affairs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Rady (The Hapsburgs) offers an ambitious survey of Central Europe from antiquity to the present day. Focusing on the area "now included in modern-day Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and western Romania," with forays into "the territory of today's Ukraine, Croatia, Switzerland, and the Baltic states," Rady draws succinct, clear distinctions between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, among other social, religious, ethnic, and political influences, and stuffs the narrative with valuable context and vivid character sketches. For example, he notes that 16th-century religious reformer Martin Luther wrote his "scabrous and funny" sermons to be read aloud, since fewer than one in 10 Germans was literate at the time, and that before Otto von Bismarck became chancellor of the German Empire in 1871, "the only personal ambition he disclosed was to drink in his lifetime ten thousand bottles of champagne." Rady also introduces readers to lesser-known figures, including 19th-century Hungarian-Croatian politician Charles Khuen-Héderváry. At times, Rady's exploration of key events, including the 1968 Prague Spring and its crushing by Soviet troops, feels somewhat cursory, but he covers a vast swath of geographical and chronological ground, and his evocative prose renders this complex history accessible. It's a boon for anyone seeking insights into Central Europe's influence on the modern world.
Customer Reviews
A bit too breazy
A whirlwind tour through centuries and countries. The narrative jumps through topics and places sometimes in the same paragraph, making the story a bit disjointed and hard to piece together a coherent narrative of, say, Hungary or Poland. Still, there is much here of interest.